World War: In the Balance by Harry Turtledove
The cover of this book is filled with enthusiastic quotations. Its “astounding”, “engrossing”, “fascinating”,”vast”,”panoramic” and “intriguing”. Thats a lot of praise for a book. Does it deserve it?
By and large yes it does. “World War: In the Balance” is the first part of a sequence of books set in an alternate World War. In this 656 page book, Harry Turtledove sets up the scenario, winds all the characters up and sets them into motion.
Its around 1940 and pretty much the entire world is at war. The Russians are fighting the Nazis. Yhe Nazis are fighting the British and the Americans. The British and the Americans are fighting the Japanese and the Japanese are fighting the Chinese.
Into this potent brew of temporary alliances descend spaceships full of alien invaders. Suddenly the balance of war has shifted completely. The Aliens swiftly conquer large areas of China, Germany, Poland and America. However, they have vastly underestimated humanities ingenuity and technological level. The Race have a limited supply of their superior machines which which to achieve their conquest and an over-reliance on tradition hampers their thinking.
The author apparently has a Ph.D. in history and certainly his knowledge of the Second World War is very good. Not only does he know who was doing what to who, but he knows what ordinary people were reading and talking about at the time.
This information is used well throughout the book. You don’t get long lectures on what Europe was like during WWII, you just get people acting as they would have done at that time.
The story that Turtledove is telling spans the globe and he needs a large number of characters to tell it properly. The downside to this is that it does take quite a long time to become familiar with the characters as he swaps between them several times in each chapter.
However, as the story begins to unfold you quickly get drawn into the action which doesn’t let up till the end of the last page. Turtledoves viewpoint characters opinions on what is happening vary considerably according to their own beliefs. Some are good, sombe bad and some just indifferent.
The author is happy to share the several different lizard’s views of thingz with us too, showing that “the Race” is no single minded entity.
Ironically however, this time spent in the lizards heads does rather work against one of his apparent goals which is to remind us that these are aliens and think differently to humans.
The single biggest weakness in the writing of this book seems to me to be Turtledove’s occasional heavy handedness. I got a little tired of reading that the lizards were slow to adapt and that humans innovated quickly. I’d got the message after it had been mentioned the first three times.
On the other hand he does a good job on the sheer horror of war. People are killed and their blood splatters over their friends. Characters are forced to hide in dark basements with only a few candles for light.
What does puzzle me though is how this story can be sustained over several more books. By the end of this one it seems as though humanity has most of the cards. They’ve bogged down the lizards advance, are developing nuclear weapons and have significantly depleted the lizards forces.
All the lizards seem to have achieved so far is to nuke Washington and Berlin. It will be interesting to see what twists the author has in store to keep the lizards in the game.
Eoghann Irving is amongst other things the creator and Editor of Solar Flare. He has a life long interest in all forms of science fiction and fantasy and a pressing need to share this interest with anyone who will listen. Find out more at his personal website eoghann.com..
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