Yesterday’s book: American Empire: Blood and Iron

Harry Turtledove returns to the alternative history world and characters he created in the novel How Few Remain and the Great War trilogy in the first novel of of the new American Empire trilogy Blood and Iron but this time his focus is politics and personal struggles rather than the fortunes of war. All of the featured characters who survived the Great War return here and Turtledove continues an unusual literary device as well: there is no single antagonist or protagonist, and instead a set of characters whose lives we follow in parallel but who mainly have little or no interaction with the others.

All alternative history stories hinge on a single changed event; in this series the difference is that in October 1862, a courier from Stonewall Jackson to Robert E. Lee completes his delivery that allows Confederate forces to exploit their advantage and thereby win the War of Secession and become a separate nation. 60 years and three wars later, the North has finally defeated the South. One of the Confederate characters becomes a Hilter-like character, racing to the heights of CSA politics. The lives of the other characters are perhaps less thrilling but Turtledove makes them all compelling in their challenges.

Where does Turtledove expect to go with this series? The title of the next volume is The Center Cannot Hold.