Below The Beltway

Book Review: The Great War: Walk In Hell

by Doug Mataconis @ 7:25 am on March 6, 2006. Filed under General

It usuallly takes me longer than a week to finish a 600 page book, but that’s exactly what I did this week as I finished Harry Turtledove’s Walk In Hell, the second volume in his Great War series.

From the cold frontiers of Quebec, Manitoba and the Canadian Rockies, down through Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky and out to the far west, Turtledove shows us what World War One would have been like if it had been fought on American soil. And its not pretty. Gas attacks. Countless numbers of casualties. And, the world as the citizens of the USA and CSA knew it turned upside down.

As the book opens, the Confederates are forced to deal with a Marxist-inspired uprising among its black residents that threatens to tear the nation apart. While the rebellion is put down eventually, it puts in motion changes that look to change the very nature of the Confederate States of America, much to the consternation of its some of its citizens.

Unlike The Guns Of The South and How Few Remain, Turtledove tells the Great War story through the eyes of the people on the ground rather than the leaders. An American sailor named George Enos. A Confederate solider named Jefferson Pinkard. Canadian families in Manitoba and Quebec dealing, quite differently, with the reality of American occupation. Piece by piece, we see how the world has changed since 1914……..and the war isn’t over yet.

All of this paints a picture of a world quite different from our own. While there are sympathetic characters on both sides of the conflict, its hard to root for either side to actually win the war. For example, the USA in this series is nothing like the America we know — more regimented, authoritarian, and less free than I’d like it to be. And there is little to admire in the Confederacy for obvious reasons. As the book ends, though, the tide of war is clearly turning in the favor of one side and against the other.