Harry Turtledove
**
Sadly persistence has little relation to quality.
In the beginning, the book How few Remain, one is full of hope for the potential of this series. The first book is good, I'll concede, but three generations later I am well ready to commend the matter to the grave. Throughout the novels Turtledove shows a lack of imagination, a lack of trust in his reader's basic ability to remember things that he has told them, for instance: in the last book the term 'diplomatically correct' is explained ad nauseum.
The series opens up with How few Remain, though technically part of neither series How few Remain explains the Confederate victory at Gettysburg, which brought forth European support and Confederate independence, before launching into its true plot, the second war between the Confederate and United States.
This war is caused by the Confederate purchase of large portions of Mexico, granting them a Pacific port that the Union finds intolerable. War ensues and defying all logic the Confederacy wins.
The next part of the set comes in the Great War series, American Front, Walk in Hell, and Breakthroughs which describe a World War with the Union aligning itself with Germany and the Confederates with the French and British, however I warn you not to become to concerned with the European matters, Turtledove deftly avoids accounting anything to do with Europe. Needless to say, it is the Northerners turn to win a war. They force a Versailles-esque treaty on the south and the next set of books is spent describing the rise of the Southern Nazies (The Freedom Party, ironically)
If you are still reading at this point, as I am, it is done only from sheer morbid fascination. Not from the dastardly exploits of Jake Featherston (The Southern Adolf Hitler) but rather from the fact that Harry Turtledove posesses such patience as to produce yet another book in this line. They are yet ahead of the Stars and Stripes series because Turtledove at least has the decency to make his scenario roughly plausable, though it grows ever less so as he sacrifices more and more to hijak American history until it fits the European set of wars between the Prussians (Germans) and the French.
Purchase: If you have absolutely nothing better to do with the money.
Price (Amazon) (Softcover unless noted):
How few Remain: $7.99
Great War: American Front: $7.99
Great War: Walk in Hell $7.99
Great War: Breakthoughs $7.99
American Empire: Blood and Iron $7.99
American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (Hardcover): $19.57 (Softcover): $7.99
American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (Hardcover): $19.57 (Softcover): $7.99