Well, I'm not at work.
Aug. 7th, 2006 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gridloreThe summer cold has turned into some sort of ear infection. No sleep, a bit off-balance, and waves of crashing nausea. I'm staying home.
Finished Settling Accounts: The Grapple. Actually, I've read it twice now. Wow. I can see why the Second Great War couldn't be contained in a trilogy. Now we have to wait for Settling Accounts: In At The Death
Only two major characters die, but one of them really hit me. Scipio was such a survivor.. born a slave, raised to be the perfect butler, he survived the Congaree Socialist Republic, the Great War, the wrath of Anne Colleton, the rise of the Freedom Party, and everything else life threw at him. Seeing him meet his end was shocking. I really hoped that he would make it and be a witness to the holocaust.
The other death was sudden and well written. The one thing a death camp guard cannot do is allow himself to think of his victims as people. Hip Rodriguez made that error. He paid for it. Sad thing was he was essentially a nice guy who believed what he was told (didn't help that the first blacks he ever met were guerrillas trying to kill him...)
And it's about sixty years late, but an American General is finally making the March to the Sea.
I think the thing I enjoy most about this series is that while events are based on the actual history, there are differences arrived at in a logical fashion. Take Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party. On the surface, they're simply Nazis with a Southern accent. But look at their motivations and you find something very different.
Adolf Hitler was motivated by a lust for power and a hatred of communism. He was, at the core, a patriot who wanted to see the German-speaking people raised up to what he saw as their rightful place.
Jake Featherston, on the other hand, is motivated by revenge. Revenge against the Confederacy's established ruling class who he sees as having lost the Great War. Revenge against the blacks for rising up against the Confederacy. Revenge against the United States for winning the war. Everything he does is based on gaining that revenge. He could care less about the causes of Hitler.. The CSA has plenty of lebensraum.
Which shows in this book. Several times it is stated that nothing is more important than ridding the CSA of its black population. Materials desperately needed at the front are diverted to build more death camps. Able-bodied troops are used to clear out black towns. The single-mindedness will be the Confederacy's downfall.
Finished Settling Accounts: The Grapple. Actually, I've read it twice now. Wow. I can see why the Second Great War couldn't be contained in a trilogy. Now we have to wait for Settling Accounts: In At The Death
Only two major characters die, but one of them really hit me. Scipio was such a survivor.. born a slave, raised to be the perfect butler, he survived the Congaree Socialist Republic, the Great War, the wrath of Anne Colleton, the rise of the Freedom Party, and everything else life threw at him. Seeing him meet his end was shocking. I really hoped that he would make it and be a witness to the holocaust.
The other death was sudden and well written. The one thing a death camp guard cannot do is allow himself to think of his victims as people. Hip Rodriguez made that error. He paid for it. Sad thing was he was essentially a nice guy who believed what he was told (didn't help that the first blacks he ever met were guerrillas trying to kill him...)
And it's about sixty years late, but an American General is finally making the March to the Sea.
I think the thing I enjoy most about this series is that while events are based on the actual history, there are differences arrived at in a logical fashion. Take Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party. On the surface, they're simply Nazis with a Southern accent. But look at their motivations and you find something very different.
Adolf Hitler was motivated by a lust for power and a hatred of communism. He was, at the core, a patriot who wanted to see the German-speaking people raised up to what he saw as their rightful place.
Jake Featherston, on the other hand, is motivated by revenge. Revenge against the Confederacy's established ruling class who he sees as having lost the Great War. Revenge against the blacks for rising up against the Confederacy. Revenge against the United States for winning the war. Everything he does is based on gaining that revenge. He could care less about the causes of Hitler.. The CSA has plenty of lebensraum.
Which shows in this book. Several times it is stated that nothing is more important than ridding the CSA of its black population. Materials desperately needed at the front are diverted to build more death camps. Able-bodied troops are used to clear out black towns. The single-mindedness will be the Confederacy's downfall.
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When I first read <i>Grapple</i>...
Date: 7 Aug 2006 16:16 (UTC)I'm liking the way that Turtledove is not slavishly devoted to the WWII European Theatre timeline; Pittsburgh was a reasonable Stalingrad analogue, but the way the CSA seem to be collapsing faster than did the Third Reich, and the way things seem to be pointing towards a March to the Sea analogue, are keeping things from being too predictable.
I'm inclined to agree wrt Featherston and the Freedom Party being subtly different from Adolf and the Nazis, although revenge was a big driver for them too; against the allies for Versailles, against the November Traitors, etc, etc. But thankfully, the CSA seems to be largely devoid of silly Klannish/Nazi Volkisch racial theorizing.
And Turtledove did a great job of using the threat of the CSA nuke program to counterbalance the virtual certainty of a crushing Northern victory through weight of arms.
I'm having loads of fun with the series; it has all the good bits from three of my favourite wars :).
Re: When I first read <i>Grapple</i>...
Date: 7 Aug 2006 16:48 (UTC)The Freedom Party doesn't need all that racial theory. The Nazis were trying to demonize people who looked German, were assimilated members of society and indeed were well-repsected in many fields. Blacks in the CSA have always been easily-singled out and are barely removed from slavery. Add in the Red uprsisings of 1914, and it becomes easy to convince the average Confederate that killing all of them is a good thing.
I'm pretty sure that post-Pittsburg the collpase was going to happen very quickly. Hitler had the Russian and Ukrainian steppes (not ot mention Poland) between him and the Red Army. General Forrest has nothing. He cannot trade land for time, he's run out of both.
Re: When I first read Grapple...
Date: 7 Aug 2006 18:49 (UTC)Re: When I first read Grapple...
Date: 7 Aug 2006 22:48 (UTC)