There is a good deal to like in Turtledove’s latest installment of his ongoing alternative history saga of a divided America. The second volume of the “Settling Accounts” series picks up right where the last one left off, with the United States and the Confederate States at war once again. The American president is dead and the Confederate drive through Ohio has split the U.S. in two. Yet with a new president the war continues, and Turtledove entertains with his own version of the Second World War, following a number of characters from the previous volumes as they fight and live through the conflict.

There is an interesting new note to this volume. The Mormon revolt in Utah – an ongoing subplot that dates back to the initial volume in the series – produces a new weapon that is more familiar to readers from today’s headlines than from histories of World War II. It seems that Turtledove has decided to introduce an element of 21st century warfare to his 1940s battlefield as a way of commenting on current events, suggesting his own attitudes to today’s violence. It will be interesting as well to see if he develops this idea further in the next volume.

Yet as enjoyable as the novel is, it suffers from a degree of sloppiness. Some of the sloppiness is error borne of too little research – I doubt that the U.S. would name a destroyer escort after a Southerner, for example – while some seems to be of exhaustion. Compared to the initial volumes of the series there seems to be a growing degree of repetitiveness in this book, not just of the last installment (a little understandable due to the need to refresh readers from what happened previously) but within the book itself. Observations and even plot developments are recycled and rehashed almost as if Turtledove is simply trying to fill space. While I am as eager for the next volume as any other fan of the series, I would be willing to wait a little longer if it led to a novel of the caliber of “How Few Remain.” Though this work may develop the tale he started with that book, it seems to be a little hollow by comparison. ( )

It seems that Pittsburgh is the Stalingrad in the World created by the survival of the Confederacy. And we are debating the use of the A-bomb on American soil. If you are interested on following up on the characters, then this is a necessary book. ( )

This is part two of the Settling Accounts tetralogy, the story of World War II fought in a world where the South won the Civil War. The Confederate Army have invaded Ohio, hoping to cut the United States in half and force a surrender. However, neither Confederate victories or the death of the American president have caused the USA to cry uncle. So, the Confederate troops turn eastward, hoping to capture the city of Pittsburgh and cripple US manufacturing capabilities. (That brings up one oddity about this alternate world--everybody worries about losing access to the factories in the East, yet West Coast efforts are rarely mentioned. Were all the West Coast magnates of our world of Confederate stock or something?) Meanwhile, in the CSA, the noose is tightening around the necks of the black community as more and more people are shipped off to the concentration camps. It looks mighty bleak. I can only hope that in the two novels remaining in this series, we might see a happy... well, at least a somewhat just, ending to this tale.
--J. ( )

The alternate World War II between the USA and the CSA continues as the CSA launches an attack on Pennsylvania after its victories in Ohio that culminates in a battle at Pittsburgh that mirrors the real world Battle of Stalingrad. Meanwhile, Jake Featherson's program of eliminating the CSA's black population accelerates.

This book was an improvement on the previous volume because there is a little more action, and a few of the annoying examples of repetition such as Sam Carsten's tendency to sunburn are minimized. There is still a lot of repetition though, and numerous examples of conversations between characters that have to relevance to anything. If all of that had been eliminated, the book could have told the same story in a couple of hundred fewer pages. The underlying story is still fairly interesting, although the viewpoint characters are becoming a bit skewed. By the end of the book there are no characters providing a viewpoint from the Confederate side of the fighting while we still have sequences with characters such as Leonard O'Doull which are basically the same every time and don't have anything really interesting to add to the story. All the characters from Canada are dead or out of Canada, so suddenly Canada has become minor background to the story after being a major part of the last seven books. What keeps this series from being really interesting is Turtledove's need to stick to the actual WWII so closely. It would be more interesting to imagine an original conflict between the two countries using 1940's technology instead of just recreating a battle such as Stalingrad with different names on the participants. Turtledove does depart from history somewhat with the introduction of "people bombers" several decades before they were common in our world, but it is not a change that has a large impact on the overall story. ( )

http://www.sfreader.com/read_review.asp?ID=899 ( )