About three years ago a friend recommended me the World War series. Setting is SF alternate history where aliens with modern day human's technology are invading Earth during World War II. The twist is that aliens have serious shortcoming in their character, they are very conservative, slow at accepting change and expected that humans are too. Much like Stargate TV show where humans start underdogs and work their way among big guys, the World War setting instantly grabbed my attention.
It took me some effort to find the books and it took even more effort to read them. There are eight of them! To be exact World War on it's own is quadrilogy (four books) but there are four more books (Colonization trilogy and Homebound book) that continue in the plot and it make more sense than not to include all eight books to consideration when talking about World War. So, are the books any good?
World War grabbed my attention very fast. Aliens are well thought out and their perspective on the matter is very interesting. Their culture, psychology and biology are all thought out and consistent within the story. Human plot lines are mixed bag, most are very good and few are boring though those boring ones have moments of shine. Among good stuff are political intrigues between Russians, Germans, Poles, USA and aliens. Harry Turtledove is experienced alternate history writer and student of history so it's no wonder that those are good parts. What Turtledove is not good at are religious subjects. Since the author is Jewish and first part of the story is set during the World War II, the subject of Jew is more than forced upon the reader while other religions, if mentioned at all, are depicted in bad light. Vatican has sided with alien invaders because they supposedly prefer monarchy and got nuked with a comment that they deserved it. Mind you, the Pope at the time was Pius XII who today (June 2014) holds the title of Blessed which is one step before being Saint. Even though he didn't do much to protect Jew at the time, I feel as if the author was expressing the hate against him. On top of that Colonization series depict Muslims as nothing but violent mob, so hate speech against them is there too. Why I make so much fuss about that? Because probably the strongest point of the books is unstereothypical depiction all (most) groups of people. There are good Russians and there are bad Russians, there good, grey and bad Americans. There are good and bad Nazis too, one Nazi solder even saves city full of Jews from German nuclear bomb. But the author fails to do that on groups of people and groups I can relate with: Catholics and Croats. For some reason Croats are just evil, without much explanation. Google fails me there and if anyone can enlighten me, please drop the comment. All in all Worldwar scores 7/10 for me and don't get me wrong about Jews, they get interesting when they start standing on their feet.
Colonization covers the events 20 years after Worldwar, when alien colonists came to populate what was supposed to be conquered world. Even though they are same species and nation aliens from the first wave (conquest fleet) and colonists didn't simply get along. The Earth and humans changed aliens as much as they changed humans, they had to learn to adapt, to trade and to recognize other nations than their own. Colonists on the other hand came fresh from civilization that had only one nation and didn't do any action until it was thoroughly analyzed. Sounds like good drama material but somehow this trilogy left me with the least memories. Most scenes were static where people lives played out and nothing of importance happened, there were some forgettable characters and I was eager to read the final book. On the up side, political intrigues were still present, there were a few plot lines that made up for the boring ones and alien perspective although predictable was still interesting. All in all 5/10.
Last book in the series was so full of potential. I wish Colonization was two books shorter and Homeward Bound at least a book longer. Homeward Bound covers multiple time periods starting from about 10 years after Colonization series and ending in near future where humans develop "warp drive" and technologically surpass the aliens. Like previous books it also covers a lot of topics, politics, cultural differences, how each side adopts parts of other's culture, how humans continues to progress while aliens stagnate but all of it compressed to a single book. I'd like to read more about the alien emperor's perspective and how aliens would fare with invention of FTL technology. The story has to end somewhere and it feels like the author wanted to end it there, still if only Colonization was shorter and Homeward Bound longer. 7/10.
