Readers who savor the patient accumulation of detail around each one will find it easy to become thoroughly addicted.ĭefinitely worth a try for Turtledove fans and armchair warriors in general.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. And ethnic Russian Vasili Yasevich helps clean up Harbin. Ihor Shevchenko labors on a Ukrainian collective. World War II widow Daisy Baxter owns a pub near Norwich. Washing machine installer Aaron Finch of San Francisco captures a downed Soviet flyer. Seattle housewife Marian Staley hasn’t seen her husband for more than a year. And there are civilians who must find ways to survive nearby atomic blasts. Cade Curtis becomes stranded behind enemy lines in Korea after his platoon gets wiped out. Combatants on the ground include, in Europe, ex-Wehrmacht man Gustav Hozzel and Soviet tank man Konstantin Morozov, while infantry Lt. Bill Staley and Boris Gribkov of the Soviet Union. There are the pilots who drop the bombs, such as Air Force 1st Lt. This time they fall naturally into three groups. Those familiar with Turtledove’s distinctive method, however, know the focus will remain on ordinary characters and how they cope with their particular circumstances.

Escalation follows retaliation, and before the world’s leaders have quite grasped what's happening, a nuclear war is underway.

The USSR immediately attacks cities in Britain, France, and Germany. It proves to be a disastrous miscalculation. Here, asserting that Stalin would not retaliate and didn’t have that many atomic bombs anyway, MacArthur persuades Truman to strike Chinese cities in Manchuria.

Douglas MacArthur certainly urged him to. Alternate-world warrior extraordinaire Turtledove ( Last Orders, 2014, etc.) delivers the opening barrage of a new speculative conflict: What if President Harry Truman had ordered nuclear weapons to be used in the Korean War?

Bombs away turtledove