In at the Death (Settling Accounts, Book 4)
Del Rey - Del Rey
Release date: 2007-07-31
Hardcover
Author: Harry Turtledove
Fiction, Fiction - Science Fiction, Fiction / Alternative History, Science Fiction - Alternative History, Alternative History, 20th century, Civil War, 1861-1865, Confederate States of America, History, United States
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In at the Death (Settling Accounts, Book 4)
Date undefinedThis is the fourth volume of Turtledove's SETTLING ACCOUNTS tetralogy, and the final installment in the eleven-book series that began with How Few Remain.
This book picks up where The Grapple (Settling Accounts, Book 3) left off - in late 1943. The Confederacy is on its last legs here, as shown by how badly their forces are getting trounced on all fronts. The USA moves out of Tennessee and down into Georgia, taking Atlanta at the end of '43. They then push into Alabama to go after the Confederate rocket works in Huntsville, and towards Birmingham to shut down the steel mills.
There's a scene in a U.S. medical aid station in early 1944 where Dr. Leonard O'Doull works on a young Confederate boy wearing a "National Assault Force" armband. This is Turtledove's alternate history version of the Hitler Youth.
In chapter VII, the Germans stun the world by dropping the war's first uranium bomb on Petrograd, Russia. (The city of Petrograd was Leningrad in WWII in our actual historical timeline, named for Lenin after his death in 1924. In 1991 Leningrad's name was changed back to St. Petersburg - its original name from 1703.)
In chapter VIII the reader is introduced to the Boeing-71, an obvious alternate version of the Messerschmitt Me 262. This fictitious aircraft has all the shortcomings of the original Messerschmitt - down to the delicate landing gear and temperamental engines. U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jonathan Moss, back in uniform after escaping from Andersonville two years prior to this story and serving in Spartacus' guerilla band in Georgia, gets the opportunity to fly the new beast, and it's love at first sight even though the Boeing-71 is a dangerous new toy for anyone who gets behind the controls of one.
Chapter IX is when the CSA and USA start tossing nukes at one another. Confederate Brigadier General Clarence Potter takes a group of C.S. infiltrators dressed as U.S. troops (who sound like Northerners) up the Shenandoah Valley through Maryland to the outskirts of Philadelphia, the de facto U.S. capital, in a truck convoy with a "poor man's" nuclear bomb. (The CSA doesn't have any aircraft big enough to handle the weight.) Even though the CSA gets in the first punch, the USA starts dropping nukes wholesale - first at Newport News, Virginia, where they hope to kill Jake Featherston, and then Charleston, South Carolina; the site of the start of the War of Secession in 1861.
In chapter XI, what's left of Jorge Rodriguez's company fighting in Virginia is forced to give up at - where else? The courthouse in Appomattox. And the remains of General George Patton's Army of Kentucky surrenders the Confederate industrial town of Birmingham, Alabama.
CSA President Jake Featherston comes to a rather inglorious and fitting end outside of *Madison, Georgia. (*In the War Between the States, Sherman's Army spared Madison destruction because it was the home of pro-Union Senator Joshua Hill.) A few days later on July 18, 1944, the Confederate States surrender unconditionally to the USA. (In our actual history, American forces took the town of St. Lô in France away from the Germans that day. Also on this date, Japanese General Hideki Tojo and his cabinet resigned.)
After the war, Turtledove wraps up all the loose ends nicely. C.S. General Clarence Potter avoids being convicted of war crimes for having Confederate troops wear U.S. uniforms only because the U.S. had Southern-sounding troops of their own infiltrate C.S. lines wearing butternut uniforms. Potter returns to Richmond under constant U.S. surveillance to write his memoirs. Jeff Pinkard is convicted of crimes against humanity for his role as a death camp commandant, and is hanged. Lt. Col. Jonathan Moss joins the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps after unsuccessfully defending Pinkard in a U.S. military tribunal in Houston, Texas. Cincinnatus Driver makes it home to Des Moines, Iowa, safe and sound after driving a U.S. supply truck through the war and attends his daughter's wedding. George Enos, Jr. gets out of the Navy and returns home to his family in Boston. Sam Carsten is promoted to Lt. Commander and stays in command of the Josephus Daniels while patrolling the former Confederate coast. Major General Abner Dowling is forced into retirement after a long, distinguished career, and Major General Irving Morrell is assigned military governor of the Atlantic Military District based in Atlanta. (In the last chapter Morrell appears in, he deals with a Confederate lawyer named Clark Butler, a not-so-subtle reference to Clark Gable's Rhett Butler character in "Gone with the Wind". He even uses Gable's famous line on the lawyer.) Sgt. Armstrong Grimes is still on occupation duty in Alabama. This book ends in March of 1945.
This series took nine years for Turtledove to write, and it took me six months to read all eleven books. All in all, it's a very interesting "what if?" look at how our country could have been if Lee's invasion of Maryland in 1862 had turned out differently.
In at the Death (Settling Accounts, Book 4)
Date undefinedI have to say that I found the ending to this long saga neither strong nor satisfying.
First off, you have to give Harry T a ton of credit for coming up with such an interesting premise and sticking it out for so long. However ...
I hate to use the word "lazy" so maybe "hackneyed" is the best way to describe the way the last three or four of these books have turned out.
The repetitiveness, the plodding pace and the inevitability of the conclusion have been written about quite a bit. But it wasa a crime the way he gave up on and disposed of his best characters (Ann Colleton) while glomming tons of ink on duds like General Dowling and Dr. whatshisname from Quebec. Or the oh-so-fascinating restaurant manager from Augusta. Tabernac! Why couldn't it have been the amazing Scipio/Xerxes to become a hero in the end, rather than his son?
Harry: I know this was a huge undertaking, but we readers have run the marathon right alongside you. And we deserved better.
In at the Death (Settling Accounts, Book 4)
Date undefinedA good strong ending to what at times seemed like a never-ending series. I liked it that the story goes beyond the end of the war and into the implications of what it would mean to reconcile parts of the country that have been separate for 80 years.
