Harry Turtledove
The endless alternate history series continues. The Nazi-like Confederacy circa 1943 finally gets its commupance as the US drives towards Atlanta. Who will get the atom bomb first? Rest assured, Turtledove will tell us someday, maybe, if we’re lucky, in as few as three or four more interminable books.
R. Cameron Cooke
On the one hand, this is a decent techno-thriller by a former submariner who knows what he’s talking about. On the other hand, it’s hard for anyone to come up with a plausible reason for a US submarine to get into an underwater knife fight with any nation’s subs. Cooke takes a good shot at coming up with a plot (Indonesian rebels with a German submarine) that lets his fictional attack sub do its thing, but wisely devotes as much attention to character as to action. It’s a good read, though I’d hate to think that the real US navy is as full of disgruntled sailors and crazy officers as is Cameron’s fictional one.
One other note: a single unlikely desperate escape from an attacking helicopter is fine, two is pushing it, but three is going over the line. Cameron’s characters are saved by an ape crashing out of the jungle who draws the fire of the chopper’s gunner, a sudden rainstorm that forces it to land, and by an RPG shot by an expiring sailor.
Rutherfurd’s books are ideal for the traveler: they provide a lot of entertainment for their weight and are long enough to last for hours of train, plane, and hotel reading. Since I had read Rutherfurd’s “London” on a trip to France, it seemed appropriate to read “Russka” on a trip to Italy. “Russka” made me want to go to Russia. I don’t know what I’ll read on that trip - maybe his books on Ireland.
“Russka” follows the Michener pattern: it’s the story of a fictional place (or two: Russia so big and diverse that Rutherfurd sets his stories in a northern town called Russka and a southern one of the same name) through hundreds of years. The characters are loosely connected through time by family ties. The tales aren’t evenly distributed chronologically. More time is spent on the 19th and early 20th centuries, so the book reads like several novellas leading up to a novel. While the early stories (the novellas) are good, the last third of the book (the novel) is even better, dramatically portraying the shifting fortunes of aristocrats, peasants, and the middle class during the turbulent decades that lead up to the revolution.
This is the story of Russia, not the Soviet Union. For the most part Rutherfurd skips over the Stalin decades and the Cold War and ends the book with a short section set in modern Russian.
This is a big book about a big country, but it’s so good that, in the end, it seems too short.
