Harry Turtledove could have just as easily titled this final volume of the American Empire series The Triumph of Evil, because that is exactly the story unfolds over the seven years that the story that unfolds covers.
The book opens where the last volume, The Center Cannot Hold, left off. Jake Featherston, possessing a political philosophy, if one can call it that, shaped by the hatred and resentment of the Confederacy’s defeat in the Great War, has been elected President of the CSA. Once that happens, the gloves are off. Any illusions about what Featherson and the Freedom Party might be are lifted as their true agenda is made true, at least to the citizens of the CSA. Political rivals are sent to prison. Elections become little more than a sham. And, the black citizens of the CSA slowly begin to realize what Jake Featherston really has planned for them.
Everyone seems to see what’s going on. Everyone, that is, except the people in charge of the United States. After the seemingly ineffectual Presidency of Democrat Herbert Hoover, the USA elects Socialist Al Smith who seems convinced that he can take the CSA out of war. Featherston goes along with Smith’s ambitions, knowing all along, of course, that he will never live up to his promises. The analogy, of course, is obvious. Instead of Munch in 1938 with Neville Chamberlin and Hitler, we have Richmond in 1939 with Al Smith and Jake Featherston, who agree to votes in three disputed states which end with a result that places the USA at a significant strategic disadvantage.
In the meantime, Mormons in Utah continue to rebel only to be readmitted to the Uniion by a new-elected President Smith. In Canada, rebellion simmers and a second generation of terrorists strikes against a character we first met during the Great War.
Starting with The Great War: American Front, Turtledove has painted his picture of an alternate American history largely through the use of viewpoint characters who have allowed us to see what America might have been like if history had been different. Some of these characters have been sympathetic, some of them have not, and many of them find their destiny here. For some, the end comes naturally; for others, not so naturally. In a series spanning such a long period of time, it is natural that such deaths would happen, but it is a testament to Turtledove’s writing that, for the most part, you are left mourning the death of those who have done good and feeling some sense of justice at the death of those who have not.
As the book ends, the evil represented by the Freedom Party appears poised to make its greatest triumph yet. The beginnings of a genocide akin to the Holocaust have already started to occur, and the code word “Blackbeard” begins the next chapter in this saga. As I’ve said with previous volumes in the series, I’m looking forward to reading what comes next.
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Book Review: How Few Remain
Book Review: The Great War: American Front
Book Review: The Great War: Walk In Hell
Book Review: The Great War: Breakthroughs
American Empire: Blood & Iron
American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold
