The Center Cannot Hold is the second book of the American Empire trilogy, following up Blood and Iron as Harry Turtledove explores a world where one crucial event in our history, lost orders to General Robert E. Lee, never happened and so the South went on to win the War of Succession. The Center Cannot Hold covers the mid 1920s until early 1933, mostly a time of peace but also when the world is ravaged by something similar to the Great Depression.
[Note: minor spoilers ahead]
In How Few Remain, Turtledove opened this alternative history 20 years later and told the story of the second war between the states, which the South also wins. Next came the Great War trilogy, when the US (the North) teamed up with Germany to defeat an alliance of the Confederacy, France, and England; Japan was somewhat involved, opposed to the US, but was too far away and only a minor player. These three books (American Front, Walk in Hell, and Breakthroughs), turned the tables and left the US on top. And left some of it’s characters aching for revenge and change.
Turtledove developed and continues a stylistic architecture in this series (also used in his Worldwar/Colonization series) that rotates the narrative through a cycle of characters. Many characters, each of whom gets a few pages in turn to develop their personal story as well as present developments from the world at large; most of these folks have been in place since American Front, though a few come to an end and others are introduced as the author needs to adjust his viewport. This architecture is very different than most anything I’ve read by other authors. One comparison who comes to mind is Peter Hamilton and his Night’s Dawn Trilogy, though everything else about these two series is quite different from aesthetics to timing to plot. Not everyone has cared for this method, though, prefering tales where focus is kept more closely through one or two key characters.
The character in the forefront of this book is Jake Featherston, the leader of the CSA’s Freedom Party, a man bitter from his treatment at the hands of the South’s elite during the Great War and at the treatment of the South afterwards. He is determined to pay back all who have done him wrong and to make his nation strong again. And he leads the Freedom Party back from a great debacle into more and more power. Featherston also provokes much comment and activity by the other main characters, most of whom cannot stand this proto-Hitler (except for the characters who belong to his party). One weakness, I feel, is that few scenes show this man interacting with people one would expect to see someone at his level dealing with, such as high level businessmen and foreign leaders.
One great strength that Turtledove displays here is an ability to give realistic portrayals of the concerns and emotions of so many different types of people. The cast of main characters includes a high society woman, rich and powerful, a single mother (her husband was killed in the Great War) in Boston, black men in both the USA and CSA, two quite different Freedom Party members, Canadians of various stripes plus a Yank who lives there and is married to one (the US conquered Canada in the war and split Quebec off into a separate, allied republic), a Jewish female politican and a woman, a former American spy, who runs a coffeeshop in DC. The range of all these players is pretty amazing.
The final book in this trilogy, The Victorious Opposition, will be released in July. Presumably the focus will be on Jake Featherston, his nasty plans to remake the Confederacy, and the rise of the Confederacy and it’s allies. You will not be at all surprised, then, to hear that this week publisher Del Rey announced that Turtledove will follow up this American Empire trilogy with another three book series that covers the WWII analog. Since this third trilogy will likely be published (the original hardcovers, that is) beginning no earlier than 2005 or 2006 and make for a total of 10 books, one wonders if that will be the end of Turtledove’s enthusiasm and the series. Not to mention that the Communists, at least as of 1933, are unable to take over Russia or any other nation–China plays no role at all in these stories–so the Cold War we experienced would not have a direct comparison.
Recommended
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