AMERICAN EMPIRE: BLOOD AND IRON by Harry Turtledove
Harry Turtledove seems to have taken on a project to re-tell the whole of the history of the twentieth century as an alternate timeline. Blood and Iron is the first book of a new trilogy called American Empire. But it is also the fourth (or possibly fifth, depending on how you count them) book about the impact of the First World War on an American continent where the Confederate states won the civil war and America remained a country divided. The Great War novels paralleled the war in Europe with a similar war in America. The Confederate states were crushed and the series ended with the Northern states triumphant. Now, in Blood and Iron we follow the history of the Confederacy as it struggles to come to grips with its crushing defeat.
Turtledove makes many fascinating comparisons with the history of our own time line. Following the defeat of Germany in our First World War, the country degenerated into chaos. There was rampant inflation (a million marks would buy you a cup of ersatz coffee) and a young army corporal called Adolf Hitler joined a fledgling political party that blamed the Jews for all of Germany's troubles. By means of clever political machinations, he soon rose to a position of power in the Nazi party with consequences with which we are all familiar.
Well, in the alternate history of Blood and Iron, a disillusioned Confederate army sergeant called Jake Featherston joins the fledgling Freedom party. The downfall of the Confederate states was caused by the African Americans, everyone knows that. The Freedom party will put them in their place and make the country strong again. It is a simple, and very appealing message to a country that is collapsing in ruins, where everyone is a millionaire, but a million dollars barely buys breakfast in the morning.
The story follows the same episodic structure of the previous novels and we follow the same characters that we came to know and love in the previous books through their new lives in the post war world. That's why it's best to consider the novel to be a continuation of the same series rather than the start of something new, for without the background knowledge of how those people fared in the recently concluded war, it would be very hard to come to grips with the current story and to properly understand their motives and their lives.
Utterly absorbing. Turtledove has done a superb job. He brings history to life and his quirky, alternative presentation of a familiar tale is endlessly fascinating.
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