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Title: Tilting the Balance (Worldwar Series | Volume 2) |
Review of Tilting the Balance (Worldwar Series, Volume 2)
- NO ONE COULD STOP THEM--
NOT STALIN, NOT TOGO, NOT CHURCHILL, NOT ROOSEVELT . . .
The invaders had cut the United States virtually in half at the Mississippi, vaporized Washington, D.C., devastated much of Europe, and held large parts of the Soviet Union under their thumb.
But humanity would not give up so easily. The new world allies were ruthless at finding their foe's weaknesses and exploiting them.
Whether delivering supplies in tiny biplanes to partisans across the vast steppes of Russia, working furiously to understand the enemy's captured radar in England, or battling house to house on the streets of Chicago, humankind would never give up.
Yet no one could say when the hellish inferno of death would stop being a war of conquest and turn into a war of survival--the very survival of the planet . . .
Product Description
- World War II screeched to a halt as great military powers scrambled to meet an even deadlier foe, armed with formidable technology that made victory seem inevitable. The menace worsens in this, the second novel in the four-book alternate-history saga that Booklist called "possibly the most ambitious in the subgenre's history and definitely the work of one of alternate history's authentic modern masters."
Amazon.com Review
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Comments for Tilting the Balance (Worldwar Series | Volume 2)
- Posted on 2008-10-03
Typical Turtledove
If you are a Turtledove fan - as I am - Tilting the Balance is more of what we have come to expect. Like all Turtledove series, it begins and contains lots of review and recap - in case you are not reading the series in sequence or forgotten the overall issues and characters from the preceeding novel.
Lots of action, good character development and portrayal, and the ever-typical Turtledove development of alternative historical events. Truth! (emphatic cough).
I did not give it 5 stars because Turtledove is such a prolific author and I have read almost all of his work that it is almost "too much the same" as prior works.
Score: 4
- Posted on 2008-06-01
And now for the next installment ....
In the first volume of this series, Turtledove has set up the intriguing premise of 'What if alien invaders had arrived in the middle of WWII?'. In order to tell his story from a variety of view points he has introduced several 'main' characters including Americans, Chinese, Russians, Polish Jews, Germans and alien invaders.
TILTING THE BALANCE picks up pretty much from the end of IN THE BALANCE with the same characters and various subplots. The aliens had expected an easy victory but where surprised to find how much the humans had progressed in short few hundred years since their survey ship had left. They were also appalled to discover how wet and cold the earth was, they had never before encountered a planet with such a wide variety of conditions and were totally unprepared for the conditions. The humans were proving to be distressingly adaptable, former enemies were forming alliances to fight back, they were even managing to reverse engineer captured alien technology which was causing the invaders no end of problems. But with the colonizing ships already enroute, just twenty years behind the aliens had no option but to press on.
This is a very interesting concept but it would probably be much better as a single volume, two at the most instead of the planned trilogy that grew into four volumes. As is usual with stories told from many viewpoints, and with multivolume stories, the author reintroduces each character when their storylines return. Turtledove carries this a bit too far, repeating the same information over and over. He also drags out each plot line, going into far too much detail which makes the overall storyline drag. I found myself skimming over much of the last half of the book, looking for something new and more interesting to happed.
Overall I would rate this series a solid five, but due to the overlong execution of the story, this ready should be two volumes at the most, this particular installment just barely makes a four.
Score: 4 - Posted on 2008-04-09
Gripping stalemate ended by a goosebump-inducing end
I was really torn between giving this four stars and five, since Amazon won't let me rate it 4.5 when it is a solid 4.5.
The story in the first continues, even longer, and with really little development save for just the bare minimal progress for humanity, due simply to supply issues for the Lizards.
The Bad:
Turtledove's writing is still amateurish as in the first one, but thankfully there aren't as many instances of its showing.
Like another reviewer complained, Turtledove also isn't keen on too much subtlty in the subplots; in much the same vein of TNA's Eric Young and Don West with their almost inadvertantly comical bashing-us-over-the-head with "Rellik, that's Killer spelled backwards", Turtledove regurgitates the same summarization of subplots over and over and over again to a point where we just wish something would happen to change the same old story; Ludmilla's pants attempting to be penetrated by Schultz and NKVD guy who's name I forgot, Ussmak's complaining about his crappy ginger-laced prior crew and his love for his new crew, Atvar's bitterness towards Straha's uppitiness, etcetera.
The Good:
The story progresses far more efficiently with regards to the war in general being basically a stalemate, with major minor actions going on on both sides, and the focus being a race to adapting Lizard technology---jets, radar, and nuclear weapons...
Every time I read from the Race's perspective, I bitterly complain with them, the savageness of the Japanese on their prisoner (whose name I forgot), the German panzers being so damn incessant and brutalizing the Race's landcruisers no matter how many losses they sustain. And when I read from Humanity's perspective, I gripe over the seeming punctuous accuracy of Lizard tanks and artillery, the irritation of their constant air barrages, and their clarity in radar and satellite that makes Humans the equivalent of the lowest of Gallic barbarians trying to fight Caesar's legions.
There's is a definitely more realistic and mature tone to this edition rather than the first, where main characters die suddenly in the heat of action where the first book had lead you to view these characters as invincible---for one, Bobby Fiore, gunned down while assaulting a Lizard stronghold in Shanghai, Lucille Potter, with the top of her head sheared off by an artillery shell right in front of Mutt Daniels, even Drefsab, our favorite junkie Lizard.
As with the first, high-ranking leaders are very scarce, with Winston Churchill making what can only be called a cameo appearance at an RAF research camp, Franklin Roosevelt checking on Brigadier General Leslie Groves at the Met Lab in Denver, and Joseph Stalin pushing hard for the use of Soviet Russia's first nuclear bomb.
And at the end of the book, Stalin gets his way...
The final words of the book are clear indication that the pace of the war is going to shift in the last book... the Soviets haved nuked a major Lizard invasion force. What now? Straha asks Fleetlord Atvar. Atvar can only say, "I don't know"...
Score: 5
- Posted on 2008-01-09
Poor Jens Larrssen
I support Jen Larrssen's actions in this book.
If i were in his place, i would have done the same thing and instead of the poor colonel and his bodyguard, i would "given it" to Barbara and the colonel.
Jens should have silently gone to the lizards without raising any suspicion. That way the Lizards would have sent denver a very good present.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2007-07-03
Wet and Cold? This Earth is Still Worth Fighting For!
In Worldwar: Tilting the Balance, spring is returning to the northern hemisphere. With the changing weather, the advantage in battle shifts back to the Race. The aliens come from a world drier and hotter than Earth, and even in summer they are uncomfortable. The winter was almost unmanageable.
But with the warmer weather, the Race finds itself facing other difficulties. Since the aliens planned for a fast conquest against medieval warriors, they find the unexpected resistance quickly draining their supplies. More importantly, they find themselves battling corruption within their ranks. To them, ginger is a highly addictive drug which creates a sense of overconfidence, and an underground drug trade has developed. Aside from the basic disciplinary problems, soldiers under the influence frequently commit blunders leading to human victories.
In the first book, the Russians and Germans managed to steal some plutonium from the Race. Polish Jews forced the German courier to give up half the German share, which they smuggled to the United States. No country yet understands how to make plutonium, and now only the Russians have enough to make a bomb. But Japan learns some key details from a captured alien pilot, and the other countries are progressing. The Race has already used nuclear weapons to destroy Berlin and Washington. Now the world waits to see which country will be the first to use nuclear weapons against the Race.
Turtledove's huge cast of characters is the focus of the second Worldwar volume. At this level, the novel is quite eventful. Turtledove gives readers an unfortunate love triangle that arises when one of the principals is mistakenly assumed dead. He also adds a major nuclear accident and the subsequent scapegoating, a subplot around unrequited love, several characters who go into hiding, and some effective use of real historical persons. He even kills off a couple of major characters.
Meanwhile, Turtledove's portrayal of individuals from the Race is commendable -- he manages to make them different from humans, but with analogous positives and negatives. Unfortunately, until an eventful final chapter, little of this seems to effect the global situation.
A larger problem with the ongoing saga concerns the motivation for the conquest of Earth. The aliens repeatedly complain about how wet and cold it is. Presumably their probes were sophisticated enough to report this. So why are they bothering? Turtledove emphasizes how carefully and deliberately they make their decisions, often taking centuries. Yet they've already sent a colony ship to a world unsuitable for them. Perhaps Turtledove can justify this, but after two volumes, it looks like a major plot flaw.
There is still much to like in Worldwar: Tilting the Balance, and Turtledove has plenty of time to overcome the present flaws. If he doesn't, at worst he will still have created an interesting work.
Despite my critical comments above, I am enjoying this series. Even where it seems padded, Turtledove still makes it entertaining.
Score: 3
