Below The Beltway

Through eleven volumes and nearly 100 years of alternate history, Harry Turtledove has been writing the story of a North America quite different from the one that we’ve lived in.
It’s a world in which the Confederacy won the Civil War in 1862 thanks to a twist in history. In our world, just prior to the […]

Harry Turtledove that is:

I’m already at Chapter III.

Steven Silver review’s Harry Turtledove’s In At The Death, the apparently final novel in the Timeline-191 series:

Settling Accounts: In at the Death is the last scheduled novel in Harry Turtledove’s massive series following the relations between the United States of America and the […]

In the tenth volume of Harry Turtledove’s Timeline-191 series, the United States finally get the chance to turn the tide on Jake Featherston’s Confederate States of America. After being dragged into the Second Great War by a surprise Confederate air attack on Philadelphia followed up by a blitzkrieg-like advance of Confederate armor through Ohio to […]

This second volume in Harry Turtledove’s Settling Accounts series picks up right where its predecessor left off. The Confederacy has driven through Ohio to Lake Erie and thrown the United States back on its heels. Rebellion is once again stirring up among the Mormons in Utah. And, the President of the United States is dead […]

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 […]

At the end of Harry Turtledove’s Days Of Infamy, the Japanese empire was firmly in control of Hawai’i, the Americans who had tried to defend Oahu in the months after the attack and invasion of December 7, 1941 were POW’s, and the Kingdom of Hawai’i was restored under a puppet King and Queen hand-picked by […]

As I’ve written in the past, there is sometimes much to criticize about Harry Turtledove’s writing style. As demonstrated most aptly in the Timeline-191 Series, he has a tendancy to repeat himself to the extent that it can become annoying. At other times though, he can write a book that is just extraordinary. Fortunately, the […]

I have yet to start reading Harry Turtledove’s Settling Accounts series, which deals with the continuing story of a world where the Confederacy won the Civil War. The third volume of that series, The Grapple, was released last week, and Professor Bainbridge has already read it. The book sounds interesting, and I’m looking forward to […]

I’m quickly learning that the mark of a good alternate history novel is that it tells a plausible story in an interesting way. The mark of a great alternate history novel, though, is that it tells a story so plausible that you sometimes have to remind yourself that history didn’t really happen this way. If […]