Below The Beltway

When we last left the world that Harry Turtledove has crafted in seven books starting with How Few Remain, the Confederacy, firmly in control of Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party was launching its Operation Barbarossa-like attack on the United States and war was once again returning to the North American continent.

In Return Engagement, the first volume in the four-volume Settling Accounts series, the action picks up right where the last volume left off. As the book opens, Confederate bombers are flying over Philadelphia, and Confederate barrels (tanks) and infantry are streaming across the Ohio River from Kentucky in a blitzkrieg-like attack that sets the United States back on its heels.

Through the eyes of Turtledove’s viewpoint characters, most of which are old friends by now, we can follow the action from the Ohio front to the battle at sea to daily life in the USA, CSA, and Occupied Canada. On the front, it quickly becomes clear that the US Army, hampered by a decade or more of neglect, is ill-equipped to stop the Confederate blitzkrieg and that the US will be cut in two. The question is whether that will knock the USA out of the war, or lead to a new resolve to fight and win. In the CSA, meanwhile, the true nature of the Freedom Party’s plans for the nation’s black population becomes apparent; camps established in the Deep South for political prisoners are turned into death camps, and blacks are dying by the tens of thousands, if not more. When word of this massacre reaches the USA, the reaction is muted to say the least, but its clear that this impending holocaust will play a major role in future volumes.

As the first volume of a series, there’s more set-up here than resolution, but this is a good continuation of a story that has spanned 60 years so far.

Previous Post:

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
American Empire: The Victorious Opposition