[Michigan]

I've read alot of SF/Fantasy over the years and i'm looking for something new. I've gone through the recommendations thread and nothing really caught my attention. I like the idea of the big scope of Turtledoves books and i've never picked him up before, is he worth a read? Who might he compare too?

Some of my favorites include Simmons, Hamilton, Donaldson, Reynolds and of course Herberts Dune, although the sequels were inferior. Would I be slumming it by picking up Turtledove?

[suciul]

There is a recent thread discussing Mr. Turtledove's books here:

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16404&highlight=turtledove

Overall he is THE master of alternate history and in many ways really made this into a full subgenre of sff (there were a.h. books before of course, but since Dr. Turtledove made his name a.h. mushroomed). I like some of his books, I do not some others...
WorldWar and Colonization are my favorite series overall and the two standalones Guns of the South and Justinian (this is straight historical under Turtletaub pseudo) and more recently I started the Into the Gap series and I liked it

[JohnT]

To answer the general question, "Yes, he is worth reading". He is entertaining. At times, he can throw something at you that'll make you think. His alternative history is pretty believable given you accept the overall premise that the general course of history will remain the same (there's a WW2...), even if some of the players change dramatically (... after the South won the Civil War 80 years prior).

His books tend to be sprawling, many-threaded series that follow multiple perspectives - if you like your novels to have a singularity of focus (or just one main character), you might want to stay away from Turtledove. Like many modern authors he writes like he's seeing a movie in his mind... a scene with Josef Stalin talking to Molotov in Moscow, then cut to a scene with a Jewish rabbi in Warsaw, then cut to a scene with the Fleetlord of an alien spaceship, then cut to an English airplane hanger, then cut to Leslie Groves hearing about uranium for the first time, then cut back to Stalin... etc etc etc. (One thing I do like about this style, is that when re-reading, if there's a character you don't like you can easily skip him/her. ;) )

His authorship is... improving. He can get "cutsie" at times with real-world people popping up in his books (George Orwell (Eric Blair, to be precise) doing radio work during WW2 in the WorldWar series), but the real problem with Turtledove is his characterization - one or two actions seem to define each character, and they'll be mentioned in every passage. One character will have very fair skin which causes him to burn, the other character committed some act 25 years ago in which they're ashamed of - and apparently constantly thinking about. And these "quirks" or whatever are mentioned every single time their brought back in the movie, er, novel. Other people have complained that his characters sound alike and while it's true they tend to all carry a certain world-weary pragmatic way about them, this complaint isn't anything that bothered me too much.

One BIG plus on Turtledove's side: he's not afraid to suddenly kill off a major character, and many times (another big plus) their deaths coming from something life-related rather than plot-related. My favorite example is the character who died out of nowhere because they received blood poisoning from cleaning raw, freshly-killed chicken while they had an open cut on their hand! In his novels, life matters - it's not something that happens to other people as you're doing your Big Adventure.

And that's the best thing about his stories - they seem "real". His good guys don't always win. Death is a constant, and as you read his novels and get a feel, you'll believe that nobody is immune, even the guy you think is the protagonist. His alt-history is plausible and the ramifications of a Southern victory in the Civil War seem real as he draws them out. I'm sure that many can quibble about this or that, but then our history is implausible too.

Do note that Turtledove tends to 2-3 major AH themes: (1) South wins Civil War, (2) Alternate WW2 scenarios, and (3) Ancient history AH's (which I haven't read).

To be honest, I read his books like I'm hittin' the pipe - with the exception of the first two, I have every one of the Timeline 191 books, as well as all of the WorldWar books, in hardback. I also have the Delvani books, the alt-WW2 that's fought with magic - they're enjoyable reads, but I did get a taste of been there, done that.

His favorite series (that I've read)

Timeline 191: South wins the Civil War, this series continues until the end of WW2. Does not include his Guns of the South, which is a different "South wins the Civil War" story. (And it's a great introduction to Turtledove. Read this book and if you liked it, try the others.)

WorldWar: (Big, goofy fun. Aliens invade during WW2, around 1942-43 or so. They come loaded for bear, but are severly handicapped (for plot purposes) by a lack of political imagination, which allows humanity to have a chance. The aliens also don't have a large tech gap over mankind - with the exception of the spaceflight, their military hardware seems to be about 50 years ahead of what we had in 1942. And I do mean 50: I think even one scene showed the aliens' using CD-ROMs.

Darkness: WW2 fought with magic. You have your German analogues, your American analogues, your Russian analogues, you even have a Holocaust scenario. But it's not Earth, they're not Russians/Germans, but they are people and instead of using physics as their technological base, they use magic. Not bad, but a bit of a slog to get through, what with 6 books in the series.

[david johnson]

the worldwar and it's following series, colonization, are fun.
i especially liked them because they took place in places i've been well acquainted with.

dj