Finished it!
Aug. 15th, 2005 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gridloreSaturday, I bought Harry Turtledove's Settling Accounts: Drive To The East is anyone shocked that I finished it last night?
Didn't think so. All I can say is he's setting up to one hell of a climax!
In tonight's performance of the Battle of Stalingrad, the city of Stalingrad will be played by Pittsburgh. The entire drive east by Confederate forces, the counter-attack, and the reduction of the surrounded forces was similar to the real-world events at Stalingrad, but just different enough to remind you that this was in fact another war. For example, the US wasn't feeding conscripts into the fight, handing every other one a rifle and telling the other to pick it up when the first guy died. No, this was a battle between professional armies, and well written.
Two major character bite the dust. Mary Pomeroy is caught red-handed with bomb making materials, and showing herself to be a fanatic to the end, refuses to even consider her husband and son, choosing to be executed. She gets her wish. The death that really affected me was Tom Colleton.
The Colletons always seemed to me to be the British Aristocracy of the books, the generation that went into the Great War as a lark, looking for a quick dashing adventure and then come home covered in glory. WWI really was the death-knell of the aristocracy, and the same holds for the plantation class in Turtledove's books. The Colletons (based on a real family, BTW) were rich and idle. The driven sister ran the plantation and tried to bring culture to the dreary conservative South. The brothers, with money and no responsibilities, were rakes first-class. They wenched, drank and gambled their way through life. Until the war came. Much like the young British lords, they enlisted out of patriotism and a thirst for excitement. They got it. One brother was gassed within an inch of his life, and was killed in the Negro uprisings of 1915. The plantation was burned to the ground at this time. Suddenly, the Colleton way of life had ended. Tom and Anne adapted, each in their own way, and when the second war broke out, Tom reenlisted. His death really marked an ending for the South, the last flame of the genteel society that existed before the Great War dying in the rubble of Pittsburgh.
I just have one real hope for the final book of the series (unless there's one after this to wrap things up, it would fit.. How Few Remain, three trilogies, and a final novel) and that wish is that Jake Featherstone go down fighting. He would never hide in a bunker and eat his gun. If the Americans are advancing into the last Confederate stronghold on the continent, he will be there manning a gun, firing until the last round is expended that advancing with a fixed bayonet.
Oh, best twisted history moment in the book.. The US pincers meet in a small town in Ohio, and one character looks at the town sign and say "Lafayette, here we are."
I could strangle him.
But not until he finishes the series.
Didn't think so. All I can say is he's setting up to one hell of a climax!
In tonight's performance of the Battle of Stalingrad, the city of Stalingrad will be played by Pittsburgh. The entire drive east by Confederate forces, the counter-attack, and the reduction of the surrounded forces was similar to the real-world events at Stalingrad, but just different enough to remind you that this was in fact another war. For example, the US wasn't feeding conscripts into the fight, handing every other one a rifle and telling the other to pick it up when the first guy died. No, this was a battle between professional armies, and well written.
Two major character bite the dust. Mary Pomeroy is caught red-handed with bomb making materials, and showing herself to be a fanatic to the end, refuses to even consider her husband and son, choosing to be executed. She gets her wish. The death that really affected me was Tom Colleton.
The Colletons always seemed to me to be the British Aristocracy of the books, the generation that went into the Great War as a lark, looking for a quick dashing adventure and then come home covered in glory. WWI really was the death-knell of the aristocracy, and the same holds for the plantation class in Turtledove's books. The Colletons (based on a real family, BTW) were rich and idle. The driven sister ran the plantation and tried to bring culture to the dreary conservative South. The brothers, with money and no responsibilities, were rakes first-class. They wenched, drank and gambled their way through life. Until the war came. Much like the young British lords, they enlisted out of patriotism and a thirst for excitement. They got it. One brother was gassed within an inch of his life, and was killed in the Negro uprisings of 1915. The plantation was burned to the ground at this time. Suddenly, the Colleton way of life had ended. Tom and Anne adapted, each in their own way, and when the second war broke out, Tom reenlisted. His death really marked an ending for the South, the last flame of the genteel society that existed before the Great War dying in the rubble of Pittsburgh.
I just have one real hope for the final book of the series (unless there's one after this to wrap things up, it would fit.. How Few Remain, three trilogies, and a final novel) and that wish is that Jake Featherstone go down fighting. He would never hide in a bunker and eat his gun. If the Americans are advancing into the last Confederate stronghold on the continent, he will be there manning a gun, firing until the last round is expended that advancing with a fixed bayonet.
Oh, best twisted history moment in the book.. The US pincers meet in a small town in Ohio, and one character looks at the town sign and say "Lafayette, here we are."
I could strangle him.
But not until he finishes the series.
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no subject
Date: 16 Aug 2005 01:09 (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Aug 2005 01:30 (UTC)I just ordered it
Date: 16 Aug 2005 03:45 (UTC)(ignore the anon post, forgot to log in)
Date: 16 Aug 2005 05:10 (UTC)no subject
Date: 18 Aug 2005 04:58 (UTC)And there were a few other reasonable things that were in advance of WWII tech or practice but they've slipped my mind.
We've got the Huntsville Rocket Society, *several* uranium projects, the possible liberation of a concentration camp and so one all lined up for the next book...
Oh yeah, Featherstone thinking about pep pills has me suspecting that by the time the end comes he may not be *fit* to fight.