Book review: Curious Notions

[tigertoy]

Today’s book review is Curious Notions by Harry Turtledove.  Actually, this is like Monday’s book review, but I had my LJ client tied up with my FKO report in progress.

A long time ago, Harry Turtledove wrote stories that I liked, that were of sane length and fun to read.  So, despite my displeasure with what I’ve read of his lately, I was intrigued when I saw this normal-thickness paperback with his name on it.  It’s a fairly nice little alternate-timeline story, allowing Turtledove to disguise one of his alternate history stories as a regular SF adventure.  It lets him investigate what might have happened if the US had remained isolationist and the Germans had won World War I.  It’s not a very pleasant scenario, and I won’t say any more about the plot than that.  The story itself is fairly simple, nothing for the ages, but enjoyable, and blessedly short.

Worth the time to read, but probably not worth going out of your way for, except to prove that Turtledove can still write something I have some interest in reading.  7 out of 10.

Comments

[daev.livejournal.com]

I was really amazed to discover that one of the time-travel stories from Asimov's that I had liked in the '80s was written by Turtledove. It was short, thoughtful, and actually treated the past as a foreign country. I wonder what happened?

You might find this snarky little article by james_nicoll funny: How To Write A Harry Turtledove Alternate History (http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_frm/thread/8530b6941db2c6f9/).

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Amusing, and only slightly exaggerated when applied to Into the Darkness, the book that turned me from a Turtledove fan into a Turtledove skeptic.