The Great War: American Front
By Harry Turtledove
Del Rey, $25
ISBN 034540615X

Buy or borrow this book! Support your local independent bookseller Find it in a WorldCat library Compare prices at major online bookstores

With The Great War: American Front, Harry Turtledove continues to fascinate readers with his stories of "alternate history." From his Worldwar tetralogy (aliens invade the earth during World War II) to The Guns of the South (time travelers equip Robert E. Lee with AK-47s), the "what ifs" of war are played out on the printed page. In his newest series, Turtledove returns to a world where the South won the great conflict, but the result, while enthralling, is not very cheery.

In The Great War, the world as we know it hinges on a lost set of battle plans wrapped around some cigars during the Civil War. In Turtledove's world, the plans weren't lost, and the South won the War Between the States.

In How Few Remain, the first book of this series, a second, bitter war is fought in the 1880s, ending in a standoff, but the real story is how the lives and philosophies of the two countries are forever altered. In The Great War, the uneasy truce comes to a violent end with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914; the first World War begins, but this time it is fought on American soil.

Picture this -- from Maryland to Utah, Quebec to Oklahoma, Kentucky to Hawaii, Americans are fighting Americans, on the ground, in the air, under the sea, in trenches, in tanks, with aerial bombardments, poison gas, prison camps and firing squads.

Despite a plethora of interesting characters, it's really hard to root for either side. That is also the strength and power of this book: Turtledove offers a balanced portrayal of the men and women on both sides of the conflict. Whereas in How Few Remain the main characters are Abe Lincoln, Mark Twain, George Armstrong Custer, and Teddy Roosevelt, famous Americans of history play only a peripheral role in this book.

The real heroes of The Great War are those that look with horror at the war. They are the poor and downtrodden -- African-Americans, manumitted and second-class citizens in both nations, and the poor white working class in both the north and south. They are communists.

That's right, communists. They read works by Marx and Lenin and Lincoln(!). And, as astonishing as it might seem, the "reds" offer the only hope the two countries have -- but at what cost? Their fate remains to be seen, as Turtledove leaves us hanging at the end of The Great War. I'm sure his next book will be worth the wait.