I'm tiring of Harry Turtledove's writing, but I decided to read the last book in his "aliens invade during World War II" series by way of completism.
It wasn't good. Here's a review from Amazon that catches everything bad about it:
Monumentally Bad, February 8, 2005
Reviewer: R. Clark (Ridley Park, PA United States)
It started out as a grand, fun idea: "what if an alien invasion just happened to interrupt World War II." And it was entertaining, for a while.
But as it dragged on and on, book after book, trilogy after trilogy, it became clear that Turtledove had no real plan for wrapping it up.
The present book is no less frustrating than its immediate predecessors, and the unbelievably bad writing makes it painful. I have never encountered this much repetetiveness, or plowed through so many scenes where nothing happens, before.
We read a scene where a human awakens from cold sleep, and learn that he's weak and uncoordinated at first. OK, we get it. It is not necessary to repeat this information every time a new POV character awakens from cold sleep.
Lizards lower their eyes when they mention the Emperor. OK, we get it. It's not necessary to describe them doing so *every single time a Lizard says the word 'Emperor'*!
We get that humans are more creative and develop technology faster. We get that Lizard society is hide-bound and stratified. We get that it's hot on Home. We don't need scene after scene re-emphasizing these point without expanding on them or relating them to something else in the plot.
The actual story told in this book could have been handled in 50 pages.
But that's not the worst of it. The characters are the same templates they've been since the series began, with little or no change and little or no dimensionality. They don't do or say new things, they just do and say the same things as they get older.
The Lizards are just scaly humans with a mating season and a superiority complex. Nothing alien about them, really.
Ultimately, the entire exercise becomes unbelievable, boring, dull, and a complete waste of time.
Don't bother. Even if you've managed to struggle your way through the whole series up to this point, this book is still going to make you regret the time you spend on it. I know I do.
RichC
Ported comments:
schrodingersgnu
2006-01-02 01:34 am UTC
I wasn't going to read it, until I found it in a friends bookshelf. I kind of wondered what it must be like being the editor for a book like that...
"But, please, Dr. Turtledove, you mention this lack of innovation in every single page. I have to delete the vast majority!"
"No. Me Big writer. Write fast. Publish lots. Books must be long. Me Big Writer."
ffutures
2006-01-02 11:56 am UTC
The enormous cop-out at the end is annoying too. Yeah, humans are so cool that in fifty years we can invent new physics and technology that a bunch of aliens haven't come up with in several thousand... Riiiight. That plot was old when John W. Campbell was still editing Astounding (before it became Analog) and is now senescent.
parakkum
2006-01-02 11:54 pm UTC
The way he alluded to it was also painfully clumsy. "How big an advance is this?" "It's so big, it's like [BAD ALIEN METAPHOR HERE]." Gah.
I'd seen Turtledove do the same kind of clumsy semi-reveal before, when someone has a clever plan in a book and he wants you to know it exists but still wants the outcome to be a surprise, but this time he did it over and over again.