The Wages of Sin

by Harry Turtledove

A terrifying tale about HIV spreading in the early sixteenth century by an author, Publisher Weekly calls “The Master of Alternate History.” What if HIV started spreading in the early 1500s rather than the late 1900s? Without modern medicine, anybody who catches HIV is going to die. A patriarchal society reacts to this devastating disease in the only way it knows it sequesters women as much as possible, limiting contacts between the sexes except for married couples. While imperfect, such drastic actions do limit the spread of the disease. The ‘Wasting’ (HIV) has caused devasting destruction throughout the known world and severely limited the development of technology as well, creating a mid-nineteenth century England and London almost unrecognizable to us. This is the world Viola is born into. Extremely intelligent and growing up in a house full of medical books which she reads, she dreams of travelling to far-off places, something she can only do via books since her actions and movements are severely restricted by both law custom. Meticulously researched and exquisitely detailed in a way only a master like Harry Turtledove can do, this book is a tour-de-force from one of the best historical and alternate history writers ever to write in the genre.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Alternate History, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy

286 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2023

About the author

Dr Harry Norman Turtledove is an American novelist, who has produced a sizeable number of works in several genres including alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy and science fiction.

Harry Turtledove attended UCLA, where he received a Ph.D. in Byzantine history in 1977.

Turtledove has been dubbed "The Master of Alternate History". Within this genre he is known both for creating original scenarios: such as survival of the Byzantine Empire; an alien invasion in the middle of the World War II; and for giving a fresh and original treatment to themes previously dealt with by other authors, such as the victory of the South in the American Civil War; and of Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

His novels have been credited with bringing alternate history into the mainstream. His style of alternate history has a strong military theme.

Reviews

[Joanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

hey what the fuck. atrocious. strongly worded letter to follow.

[Someone else in the reviews pointed out that the publishing house may have written this book’s tagline and summary. Nevertheless, the premise put forth of a compelling tale of alternate history it is not. My many qualms are both about how this book does Not follow up on these promises of the summary, and Also how disappointing the actual execution is.]

A brief summation: the first chapter is in 1509 Congo, and a mysterious illness begins to spread! The rest of the book is in early 1850s England (the small rural town of Salisbury and the big city of London). Viola Williams is 16 and sad because the Wasting keep her from being allowed to pursue her dreams of seeing all the wondrous sights and places of the world! Instead she will read travel diaries. She is very close with her father who is a doctor. Dr. Williams tells Viola she might be married to Peter Drinkwater, the son of his old friend, if she so chooses. The fathers meet with their children. The kids like each other well enough. Peter doesn’t mind that Viola (gasp!) reads!!! Peter is going to London to study law like his father and they will be wed when they return. Peter leaves, and stays at the inn where all the students are, and has a really horny roommate who keeps going to brothels despite Peter’s disapproval! Peter keeps up correspondence with Viola! Peter eventually gets Drunk one night after doing so well at a mock trial, and then his roommate gets him Drunker and takes him to a brothel!!! Peter is so disappointed in himself and fearful he has contracted the Wasting and scared now that Viola will reject him! He writes her a letter revealing all! She writes back and tells him that this scares her, but she admires his honesty and knows that other men would be less truthful and if he remains healthy, she will go through with the marriage! Peter’s roommate contracts the Wasting and is branded on the forehead with a W as is custom! Viola writes a speculative fiction book about a world in which the Wasting never happens and people roam about the earth, carefree and naked! Peter passes the bar! Viola’s book gets published! Peter comes home! They get married and move in to Peter’s family’s home and have a baby and argue about finances and then it ends!?!

The tagline on the cover of “The Wages of Sin” declares that this is “A Nineteenth Century England Ravaged by HIV.” To me, such a premise suggests that this book might undertake many large issues, including but not limited to: medical history, class, race, gender, sexuality, colonialism. And, hm. I was very prepared to get riled up about this book no matter how it all broke down, but I did not anticipate nearly three hundred pages of NOTHING happening. Of an utter lack of engagement with histories in a thoughtful, dynamic fashion.

Certain symptoms of HIV and AIDS are mentioned as part of this book’s Wasting, yes. Class differences are alluded to between two or three significant characters’ families, sure. Gender differences take a prominent seat at this table, certainly. But there is one particular absence in this story, and that is: in the wielding of a real history and an actual epidemic which devastates the gay community and particularly impacted the working class and people of color, this book has not a single gay character, nor a whiff of homosexuality. (There is an instance of one character pondering about how for sodomites, the Wasting might affect them worse? but this is a passing thought, a single sentence, and one never returned to in thie 286-page book.)

Additionally, the only people of color we see (in 1851 England! at the height of real-world colonialism and British presence!) are the Africans who are in the first chapter alone, in an establishing introduction that takes place in 1509, and in particular with an enslaved Black woman heavily intimated as the “Patient Zero.” Which, in this regard - did Harry Turtledove in his research ever read Richard McKay’s book “Patient Zero”? Is he aware that Gaétan Dugas, the “real patient zero,” was incorrectly posthumously labeled as such?? That the 0 was an O that stood for “Out of State”??? Boy oh boy. My last note on race (or truth be told, the absence of race) in this book is a mention at the start of chapter five that mentions the slave trade has been forbidden since at least 1700… based not on abolitionist thought or notions of liberation but rather on this world’s understanding/belief that “since the deadly disease had come to christian lands out of Africa, continued traffic in people who might bring it with them was too great a risk to countenance.” This issss quite the move, to choose the ease of Only writing about whiteness with this as the reasoning! I can’t unpack that any more because this is Bonkers!!!

I really, REALLY thought, based on the tagline and summary, that my major issue with this book would be with portrayals of homophobia! I thought this author would write homosexuality badly, carelessly, with Victorian (or, shall we say, Michaelian) attitudes of morality - not that he would avoid them entirely!! Furthermore, I truly, TRULY was convinced that there would be deep and horrible fears of kissing, touching, vague interacting with, even perhaps breathing the same air with ANYONE who got a nick or cut, who menstruated, who spat in the street. Not to mention, of course, terror of catching something from anyone who did have sex! (Sure, this concern specifically is addressed - a brothel is mentioned, laundresses are alluded to as loose women.) Instead of incorporated any medical research and thought and translating it to a speculative 19th century approach, it’s just boiled down to plain ol’ misogyny!

Gender is somehow one of the only Overarching topics our author has seen fit to create an Involved narrative about. (I would say Complicated or Interesting, but. it’s neither of those. It’s only Involved.) Women have to veil their faces and wear oversized garb (n.b.: we gotta call up Edward Said because OOOF the Orientalism!!!) when outdoors to disguise their figures, sooo as not to tempt men? To try to avoid being horrifically cat-called? Women also cannot travel or go places, so our poor ingenue Viola reads travel diaries, dreams of going even to London, wishes she could see faraway sights. I will say, all these stipulations do match up with the “patriachal society” mentioned in the book’s summary.

HOWEVER! This is such a highly focused book that it has some absolutely massive blind spots. Even as our author underscores the injustices women face - their inability to travel safely on their own, the endless harassment and catcalling on the street, the frustration of the everyday tedium of cooking and cleaning and caretaking - women are deeply underserved as a varied and manifold class. We mainly focus on the middling-class families of Viola and Peter. What about women in different class situations? How are women actually living and working and laboring, beyond these two major families? There’s a midwife mentioned who does make a momentary appearance, laundresses alluded to, sex workers engaged with briefly. Embroidery and piecework are referenced as well, but that does not a living make or a family support! What about ANYONE else?! Does domestic work exist in other, higher-class homes - do women do those tasks? How does this world function?! What about the arts! What about theater and entertainment and musicians! What about tutors and teachers! What about museums!

There is a deep lack of worldbuilding, and left me with questions on practically every page that were rarely answered. Who keeps track of any sort of list of the disease? Is it by town/municipality/county/closest city/country? Are there regular medical checks? To whomst are you reporting - the crown, the police, The Lancet, your local doctor (mildly answered in ch. 7 - our ingenue’s doctor father says he must report a diseased patient to the King’s officials and the ecclesiastical authorities)? What are the differences between these different places? Are things more or less stringent in City or Country - what passes under the radar, can people be bribed? (this is dwelt on slightly - the lusty roommate says that there are sex workers with the Wasting, or some may take extra coin for an infected client)? Do neighbors turn each other in? Are doctors and nurses wearing mid-1800s approximations of PPE? Are we fearful of contact? Of fluids? What, medically, do we know?

There are scant mere instances, or occasional examples, or speculative case studies in this book, rather than a world carefully built upon upon fear of infection. We hear an allusion to a father who has strayed before marriage and never told his wife. There is a woman who meets with Doctor Williams, who says she has fallen ill by a lover. But are there any uncles we do not talk about, whose names are in a family bible without a deathdate written below his name? Is there a house down the street that we avoid, now that we heard one of their teenagers has has a dalliance? Is there a hospital spoken about only in whispers cramped with the skeletal bodies of the dying? Are there weekly notices in the paper with a tally of the wasted dead? NO! There is no textural detail, no emotion about this world! Just a lot of chicken stews, eaten with iron utensils that are never seasoned, which feels once again ridiculous (wouldn’t tin or wooden utensils be more affordable and not have rust?! AUGH)

I am also gobsmacked at the absolute lack of community in this book. Everyone is sequestered. When I think of the AIDS crisis, one of the major things I think about is community and the people/circumstances that enabled or or desperately sought or prevented those connections. Of social gatherings and support groups, of life partners forbidden to see each other in hospital, of funeral homes refusing the dead, of the hazmat distancing of bodies and fluids, of packed funerals as friend groups found themselves whittled away at. This book has a lack of community, not to mention a lack of women able to find any community! Viola’s mother and sisters meet her fiancé’s mother and sisters at a community gathering for the first time, which is so silly that a. Viola in her shroud is able to be recognized at all by someone who doesn’t know her, and b. the fathers have been friends since their schooling days and their families have not met before. There’s no social nights, quilting bees, book clubs, salons for women and girls to gather, and childhood education is not brought up in particular detail as another setting where community and friendship might be fostered. Obviously, this book - and the lack of community - is clearly very informed by Covid. But even without the digital online spaces, community can be fostered without contamination - and could even have been another way of gendering and marking differences between two distinct spheres!

Major question: what sort of medical consultation or research went into this! Again, we get some lists of symptoms - sweating, exhaustion, sores, rapid weight loss. Generally, we get examples of what Would happen, rather than what Does happen. We do not get to witness anyone’s degradation and sickness. Even Peter’s lusty roommate, who we do follow his contraction of the wasting and his eventual branding of the W on his forehead - we see him as more a singular unpleasant character upon whom we get to plaster our communal dislike. There is no actual representative of community wasting away, of grief and fear, of family and friends and community loved and lost. Nor are there perspectives of those who fell ill and whose families disowned or refused to help them. The Wasting proves only to be a looming spector, but overwhelmingly has no basis in their lived reality in the duration of this book.

I am thinking too about how Princess Diana shook the hand of an AIDS patient, and how this was a pivotal moment in the optics of AIDS - both the frenzy and fear, and the humanization and connection. How much knowledge does the England of this time have of how the Wasting is passed along? Is there a fear of bodily fluids? Which ones? Who cares for the sick and dying? How are the dead handled?

Perhaps I just come from an angle of historical and medial knowledge: my degree is in 19th Century Studies, my sister is a PhD candidate in medical history, my mom is a nurse. Questions and curiosities about this time in history and about medical knowledge are deep in my marrow, and this book was maybe just deeply unsatisfying to me due to my own background! Still, it feels like a terribly promising or at least intriguing setup that simply did not go anywhere.

Details I noticed as an alternative history:

This is a Catholic England! Fun detail to realize, as a Henry VIII who died too early to cause a religious schism would have indeed set an entirely different trajectory for the rest of the England. Noticed too that we have a King Michael III in 1851 - a Victorian England this is not. Again, kinda fun that this sneaks up on you when you find early on characters toasting to this king’s health. But wouldn’t it have been neat to start this book with a revisionist list of kings/queens of England? (Or would there even be any queens?)

Marlowe is lauded as the greatest writer of English verse, which therefore suggests that Shakespeare did not live long enough to write much. HOWEVER! Viola’s father says the phrase “A hit, a palpable hit!” once after pretending to be wounded. This is a line by Osric during Hamlet and Laertes’ duel at the end of Hamlet, which was written around 1600. Shakespeare’s own timeline is 1564 - 1616, with his playwriting career beginning in perhaps 1589. Did Shakespeare still write Hamlet? Did Shakespeare still write a dozen or so plays before then? Also, Hamlet was also thought to be named after Hamnet, Shakespeare’s son, who died in 1596 at the age of 11. What’s up with all that!!!!

Viola reads a book called “Voyage of the Bassett” which has been written by a naturalist; this is a clear riff on Charles Darwin’s “Voyage of the Beagle.”

Masturbation is encouraged! What an amusing thing to stumble upon, and which the Catholic Church approves of so that young people might not be tempted to have sex before marriage aka might avoid contracting The Wasting. A little unclear if masturbation is approved of for women as well in this society, or if our writer simply did not want to write such a scene like that for Viola, or did not care to think more deeply about the implications of women as sexual beings.

Finally:

If I were writing a book on this premise? It would be set in the 1880s to 1890s. It would be in the midst of Oscar Wilde’s tour in America (meeting with the likes of Henry James and Walt Whitman!) and the Gossip that he was dying there instead. Perhaps he would return and be visibly wasting away at his trial, and not last long in Reading Gaol. Edward Bellamy’s sci-fi/utopian fiction “Looking Backwards: 2000 - 1887” would be published, and Viola would be moved by this world and also be furious that another person (a man, at that!) has been given credit for publishing a similar piece, before her book has been accepted by a publisher. There would have been an emphasis on public and private spaces - a very 1800s concept already! There would have been some kind of break or punctum or something that Viola creates, or crosses some real and dangerous boundary - running away, donning boy drag to gain access somewhere, something!

If I were writing This book but better? I would have made it far more epistolary. Starting with a chronology of kings/queens of England. Newspaper clippings: listing how many dead this week of the Wasting, obituaries of notable people. Common board notices: upcoming events relevant to the plot that could be introduced here, wanted ads for those evading the law/the doctors, reminders about regular medical appointments. Letters: to and from Viola and Peter, between their families - this could have been GOOD with the “who knows what!” about Peter having dallied. Books: parts of “Voyage of the Basset” or the other travel books, parts of Viola’s diaries, parts of Peter’s legal readings and documents and homework. Books also: parts of Viola’s book she’s actually writing! The correspondence between her and the publisher! Correspondence is a major concept of this book, but it could have been pushed so much further and made the primary way information was relayed to the audience! An epistolary-style novel would have justified the limited perspective we are getting. There would be far fewer major gaps about the world around these characters if we were only reading their documentation.

In short (in long!!!), a book that frustrated me deeply, for many reasons, which I am tired of thinking and writing about. Established a world that does not follow through on the intrigue of its possibilities, and does not engage with source material on medical history or community care or grief & mourning. Please read any other book.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The blurb on the cover says "a terrifying tale set in a nineteenth century England ravaged by HIV." IT IS NOT. But once, as a reader, you adjust to the fact that the people at the publisher who decide what to put on the cover to draw sales aren't concerned with what the book is actually about, then all proceeds quite well.

This is a pretty quiet story. Two main characters who end up in what's essentially an arranged marriage. A young woman who bristles against the way society has decided to deal with the Wasting: by hiding women away. There are occasional reminders of how the world has changed - no Shakespeare; Henry VIII died before he was able to break away from the Pope and create the Church of England - but by and large this isn't a story about the "wow, this is so different!" things that a lot of us are accustomed to when it comes to alternate history. I found myself really enjoying the story of Peter and Viola, their trials and tribulations and how they came together, and how this little romance worked in a world so constrained by unchecked disease; I can see how other readers might not have been as into it, though.

[Audrey]

Man, I was so into this. DNFing around 120 pages because the plot just stopped plotting. Such a cool concept, obviously well researched with clever and believable "what if" world-building. But not much else.

[Breezy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for letting me read this book in advance of publication.

Harry Turtledove always makes me see a new perspective, and in Wages of Sin, he does that in spades.

We’ve all done it. Imagine a world where one single difference could have a massive impact on the world today. How would that play out for a first generation? And how about many years later?

In Wages of Sin, we’re introduced to a world where HIV made the jump to humans and was first spread in the early 1500s. European slave dealers, who caught the virus from the very slaves they had brutally captured, took the disease to their homelands. After only pages, the reader is both captivated by Turtledove’s deft characterization, and touched with dread for what will soon be ahead.

This would have been a fantastic jumping off point to continue the story in that timeline. It might have been easier that way. Seeing how the pre-industrial world would have dealt with this very recent virus would have had me flipping pages as quickly as I could. Turtledove’s choices were limitless. Where the story played out was perfection and had my iPad running long into the night.

Turtledove drops us into a world forever changed by the virus. In 1851 England, Viola Williams watches the world from her little quarters above her father’s doctor surgery office. She, like every other female of pubescent age, is kept apart from most men. AIDS, called the Wasting, has taken hold in every aspect of this world, and is generally not well understood. As a result, women and teenaged girls are kept behind closed doors except for very limited circumstances. The only men they're permitted to know are their fathers and siblings, while men are allowed every freedom.

Violet and her sisters live a quiet life, where they're afforded some small scraps of freedom by their parents. Viola, for example, helps her father to make diagnoses and discusses possible treatments for the townspeople who seek Dr. Williams’ help. But even that must take place in her quarters. She never actually sees a patient, only brainstorms symptoms and possible causes with her father. She is a more than capable assistant.

In another, less-cruel world, Viola might have been able to work openly as her father’s assistant. In this place, where women must be protected by their male relatives, most jobs are inaccessible to women. With the ultimate risk of The Wasting hovering over them, career is too lofty a goal for most women. Her sister Katherine’s talent at the harpsichord will wither just as Viola’s sharp brain and ways of deduction will never see the light of day.

Viola is always looking outward, her gaze firmly set on a world where men and woman can move about town freely. And while her family tries not to tamp down her dreams, they know they must be realistic. Strange men can’t be trusted. It is for a woman’s safety that she is locked away.

Soon, it becomes clear that Viola’s life will take her in new directions. Salvation comes from an unexpected corner. Peter, the son of her father's dearest friend, is presented as a potential husband. Since their fathers agree to the arrangement, Viola becomes determined to make their new connection work, though they can only get to know each other at a respectable distance.

Peter has opportunities Viola doesn’t and will be studying to become a solicitor, eventually taking over for his father. He and Viola vow to get to know each other over the miles, writing to each other frequently while he attends school in London. As Peter begins to find his footing at a Law school in the big city, Viola discovers a love for storytelling, and the belief that her world could change.

With the Wasting a constant thought on everyone’s mind and the fear of it dominating society, is the world ready for Viola to challenge the status quo? Setting pen to paper, she begins to dare dream that she can be more than her station and sex indicates, while hoping Peter never gives into temptation that could ruin them both.

This book manages to be incredibly contemporary to these moments in time, while presenting a past “could have been” that echoes the Handmaid’s Tale. Though Viola’s family treat each other well, other men taking liberties, just because they can, lurk around every corner outside their home. Viola, her mother and sisters can't even do their shopping without men and boys touching them as if they they had a God-given right to the women’s bodies. The women are told again and again that they're mere objects rather than humans.

It has taken me a few days to gather my thoughts. This book hit me on a deeper level than I anticipated. There’s a magic to the way Turtledove presents society through the small lens of average people in an average village. The focus sharpens and the reader can empathize with only a few main characters rather than a huge cast. The reader’s connection with Peter’s and Viola’s families are strengthened as we see them in slice-of-life moments.

As we see both characters evolve together and apart, it becomes clear that as their feelings for each other grow, so do their aspirations. Neither is fulfilled by their station in life, and they learn a great deal about themselves as they confront the cost of wishes and dreams.

Life doesn't exist in a vacuum in Turtledove’s world, and the story is threaded delicately with a richness that might be easy to miss. I’d expected this England to be ruled by Queen Victoria, but then I realized that is not our England. King Michael III rules his British subjects.

While I found the last third of the book a little rushed, that was only a minor blip. I tore through this book on first read, and then read it again more slowly, savoring the nuances of this version of 19th century England.

Turtledove has never shied sway from the big issues, and in this book, it is the most resonant aspect of his tale. Religion, different classes of people, women’s freedom, women’s rights, the give and take of a marriage, and, of course, the marking and shunning those infected by a terminal disease round out a story and a world brimming with possibilities.

This book is multi-layered, complex, thought provoking and utterly absorbing. Harry Turtledove has again shown why he’s considered the master of alternate history. Don't miss Wages of Sin!

[Stephen Stirling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great!

As usual, a great read - but this time Turtledove makes the everyday life of people in the weird world he’s created into an exciting adventure in itself. That’s not easy!

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

E-book received by way of Edelweiss, thank you!

It's a Turtledove alternate history, which is to say that I cannot fault the research and I cared very much for the characters as I read. The plain and chilling premise--what if HIV (known as the Wasting) manifested itself as early as the 16th century--has hindered development of so much, and made women into third-class citizens. Of course, men continue visiting whorehouses and sating their lusts, because whyever would men change their ways for the sake of the world?

The alternate-history part is, other than the central premise, shown in dribs and drabs. The abolitionist movement succeeded more because it was agreed the slave trade was spreading the Wasting, not because of any real belief in the inherent humanity of colored people. Mary Tudor became queen when the Wasting took Henry VIII (no mention of whether he had any other wives or children), and the King of England in 1851 is named Michael. Thus, Anglicanism never took hold and most folks are still Catholic. Marlowe is considered the greatest English writer, which strongly infers that Shakespeare must have caught the Wasting and died young.

And, of course, women live sequestered in their father's/husband's homes, never interact with men they're not related to unless they get married, and must wear shapeless clothing and facial coverings if they go out lest they arouse male lusts. Viola is brave enough to complain about this, and to bluntly tell her father (who's at least more open to the notion than most men) that it's a horrible life and she hates it even as she knows she can't do anything about it. Men can't be trusted not to rape or seduce women and spread the Wasting, so it's the women who suffer. And given that it's the 1850s but feels a lot more like the late 1600s or early 1700s, it's going to be a long, long time before a doctor puts two and two together to make AZT.

It was interesting. It wasn't happy, and don't read it hoping for a miracle-cure type ending. Viola has about as good a life as a woman in her world can hope for, and even so, she's acutely aware of its limitations.

[Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m enough of a fan of the alternate history genre that I’ll read new releases from the genre even without any hope of enjoying it.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere just how tedious the umpteenth iteration of “What if Hitler won?” is and so I do look forward to the “odd” point of departure. I don’t look forward to Harry Turtledove’s output so this book stayed a while on my to-read shelf for a while before I got around to it. His last book Three Miles Down was terrible- there were too many detailed descriptions of bad meals for me to continue caring. In fact I have not read a Harry Turtledove book I would even call ‘meh’ since I was a teenager. Even with his genre establishing novels like The Guns of the South or How Few Remain I was impressed only just enough to keep reading his other stuff. On occasion I would really like a novel- even consider it a favorite: Ruled Britannia, Agent of Byzantium, and The Two Georges. Still, I have only ever recommended a book by him to another person twice. Even in his best work Harry Turtledove has never been a great stylist and is very often a bad stylist. Meanwhile over the past two decades his writing has declined further into an awkward formula: ‘what if ____? Well, it’s not, so ____.’
Yet, in The Wages of Sin that formula is almost entirely gone. There are a few places where it comes back but really this is not a badly written book. There are places that are well written and the first chapter is quite superb. Not only is this Harry Turtledove’s best novel, but it’s also a good novel. It doesn’t transcend the genre like Pavane, The Man in the High Castle, or Fatherland but it’s still a great addition to the genre.

[Frank Hofer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn’t Put It Down

How would history have changed if HIV spread out into the world hundreds of years ago? This book shows life in the mid-nineteenth century in rural England and it’s not pretty, especially for the women dressed with only their eyes showing, and basically having no rights.

There are also clues about how history radically diverged because so many people who shaped our modern world either died early or were never born. So, no American revolution, England remains officially catholic, and so on.

Highly entertaining and thought provoking read.

[Nick · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I read 200 pages of this thing before I finally skipped to the end and got enough to see the ending wasn't going to be worth anymore.

This book is terrible. Simply and overtly terrible. Everything about it is simply mind-numbingly terrible.

Allow me to start with our setting. We bounce back and forth between London and a small country village. To be fair, we really only bounce back and forth between a boarding school and a single family's house. To be even more accurate, we see Peter's room, and Viola's room. An entire world, utterly destroyed by this disease, is reduced to two rooms with people telling us how bad the disease is. We see nothing else. I even thought the introduction might be headed in a interesting direction, I was disastrously incorrect. The US still became a free and unified nation? Africa no longer sells slaves? The Chinese, anything happening in Asia? Anything happening anywhere else, because nothing is really happening in London.

Our characters are tedious in the extreme. Viola . . . Viola is vomit inducing obnoxious. Feminist nonsense spewed from her mouth with no actual reason to think these thoughts or character of her own to fall back on. It's more like a modern-day women's studies professor is transported back to this time so she can whine about everything. She doesn't have a unique thought, doesn't do anything special, simply whines about the plight of women in this made up world (which we will get to in a moment). Viola isn't a believable person, but simply a talking head spouting nonsense that I can only assume the author thinks is true in our world and is trying to make a political point. Like A Modest Proposal there is no subtlety or anything else here. The only reason Viola exists is to be the face hole making noise about the plight of woman. That is her only job.

Peter is even more tedious, but at least he isn't just used to spout political talking points. He has no actual character, no real motivation, and nothing to really do . . . he's is kind of there and he ends up getting dragged into a brothel one night. I'd spoiler alert that, but seriously it is supposed to be a big turning point and nothing ever happens.

At the end of the day, the true downfall of this book is the plot. Simply put: there isn't one. Neither of our characters have any motivation. Neither of them want to do anything. He finally gives Viola a book to write, to give her something to do, only for it to become a feminist manifesto. Peter is dealing with a roommate . . . but it isn't Peter's journey. Our characters don't do anything. There isn't an arc here, there isn't any growth, there isn't anything gained or lost for anyone. There is a page about the girls wanting leek soup, a three page journey of her not wanting her sister to read her book, two football games, multiple letters sent back and forth. Our characters aren't growing, they aren't learning, they are the same at page 1 as they are at page 300. There is no hero's journey.

This author is out of his mind. Long story short- HIV has no impact on the world if it enters in 1500. Seriously, short of the people who are sleeping around continuously, this affects the day-to-day lives of people very little. This author didn't have any ideas, he didn't have a story, he had nowhere to go with it. This could have been the same with or without HIV. This is more like the Muslims took over Europe, then a deadly disease.

He had an interesting idea, I think he could have done a lot with it. It should have been a serious of vignettes traveling around the world to show different pieces of the disease.

Is America the same? Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were both rumored to have slept around.
He mentioned Henry the VIII, kind of alludes to Shakespeare never being born, but there was so much more. Oscar Wilde is around that time (more on THAT in a moment), Dickens, the Civil War, China was opening up, Pirates, even Isaac Newton comes after his introduction. There are so many things that could have changed . . . but are never even mentioned. In fact, he spends more time bad mouthing Christ, 1500 years BEFORE our introduction then focused on historical events worth mentioning.

We understand that women were already authors, right? Mary Shelly, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austin, ALOE (who was probably the most popular), and Louisa May Alcott were all contemporaries or predated our narrative. I'm not saying they were a dime a dozen . . . but just because I don't know more off the top of my head doesn't mean they didn't exist. Of course, we don't know if they exist in our fantasy world because we know nothing about our world.

We realize there was still disease during the 1800's, right? Europe had survived the plague, and other various forms of disease before this came around. In fact, HIV isn't even the scariest or deadliest disease at this point in time. The flu kills more people, and kills faster. HIV can take decades to die from? Decades to even show symptoms? Honestly, why are they even worried about it?

Why is everyone in the 1800's so oversexualized? The overtly sexual world doesn't really come about until the sexual revolution (think 1960's, specifically the advent of birth control, which separated sex from childbirth). This is still the Victorian age, the time of Jane Austin writing scandalous books like Pride and Prejudice. If anything, a deadly STD would have extended and held off the oversexualized actions of Walter (who is our special case), but more likely the random men we see on the streets. The author only uses this because misinformed people of our world will simply agree that it was the same back then (Viola, men never change, men are evil, blah, blah, blah). It wasn't. The past had their issues with sex, but it wasn't until woman wanted the same "sexual freedom" as men that you start seeing these problems become mainstream.

How does HIV turn women into secondhand citizens? I'm confused as to what made people think that was going to solve anything. By the time our story comes up, it just IS that way, but there is no reason for it. In fact . . . I feel the need to simply say the quiet part out loud. The real reason this book simply doesn't work is because the author isn't actually willing to come to terms with HIV and how it is spread and who gets it.

HIV is not random like a cold, or fixed with modern conveniences like plumbing. Sex is completely avoidable and preventable. In fact, men's urges can be handled pretty quickly simply by getting married younger. It would seem like arranged marriages would simply skyrocket, everyone would be married by the time they are twenty, and Peter would have gone to school married and not needing a brothel because his wife was at home. Women don't become second class citizens, and you could argue are elevated as families want to protect their sons.

You see, the sad truth about HIV is that there is one demographic DISPROPORTIONALITY affected by HIV: gay men. This author apparently doesn't want to deal with the truth of the situation. The story would have been better if Peter gets into a relationship with Walter, but is trying to hide it from Viola. People getting the Wasting would have been a stigma because it would have revealed another, larger, stigma: homosexuality. Oscar Wilde is all of a sudden a much more interesting and important character. Set at an all-boys school, with women hiding for no reason, it would have made more sense if that's where our story was headed.

What this author does is nothing . . . simply put he doesn't have a story. I'd imagine he didn't want to come off as anti-LGBT, and therefore wrote a story that has no bearing or significance in any way. HIV is not spread by betrothed heterosexual couples, but by gay men having anonymous sex.

Shoot, the author could even have made this a PRO-LGBT story by explaining how if the couples aren't hiding then they can be safe and monogamous (it'd be all lies, but the option is there.)

This could have been a much better story, man this thing was so bad.

Easily, hands down, one of the worst books I've ever picked up.

[Donna Deck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a good amount of alternate history, and "The Wages of Sin" by Harry Turtledove is probably the best of the genre I've read lately.

By the mid nineteenth century older girls and women are secluded in their homes. When they need to go outside they wear shapeless garments that cover their bodies and faces. They can't go anywhere on their own. They can't meet other people or socialize in public. Such strict rules were brought about in an attempt to stop the spread of The Wasting (HIV).

Viola and Peter are two young people matched by their parents. When Peter goes to university to study law, Viola stays home (the women always stay home) but finds ways to be productive. Their courtship happens via post as they share truths about themselves.

This was an enjoyable, if tense, read. With each new chapter I felt dread that I might read of one character or another showing signs of infection, and felt that something menacing was only a page turn away. I still have concerns.

This would be a great book to sit and discuss with those who have read history, law, religion, and sociology.

[Silver Screen Videos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Few authors have been recognized as the unparalleled masters of a particular literary genre. At the top of that short list is Harry Turtledove, whose alternative histories include multigenerational sagas of an America in which the Confederacy won the Civil War and other tales in which magical creatures affected the course of history. His latest work, “The Wages of Sin,” lacks the eye-catching hook of many of his other books. Instead of a topsy-turvy Civil War, he asks what the world would look like if HIV had spread to Europe centuries before the medical tools existed to combat it. The premise has the potential to be just as fascinating as Turtledove’s other books, but a somewhat lackluster storyline dims its impact considerably.

In “Wages of Sin,” Portuguese slave traders brought HIV to Europe in the early 1500s, where the spread was dramatic. Most of the book is set in England in the 1850s. AIDS was referred to as the Wasting, and people knew how it spread but little else about the disease. To combat the disease’s spread, women were forced to wear concealing garments and veils in public to avoid inciting lustful ideas in men. (Real-world practices today are similar in some cultures.) Dating was non-existent; instead, English families arranged marriages for their children. However, brothels still flourish for those men seeking pleasure and willing to take a risk. To protect the rest of society, those who display the early symptoms of AIDS are branded with a “W” on their foreheads.

The protagonists of “Wages of Sin” are a young, engaged couple. Viola Williams is the daughter of the town doctor in Salisbury, a small distance over a day’s coach ride from London. Her fiancé, Peter Drinkwater, is the son of a local solicitor. For most of the book, he’s off at law school in London. She wants to be more than a housewife and is frustrated by the caste system in England. So, she reads and writes. He’s determined to stay on the straight and narrow and avoid the temptations his wealthy roommate succumbs to nightly at a local house of ill repute. They write each other letters that take a week to arrive. And they philosophize a lot.

If this plot description sounds somewhat bland, it is. Peter and Viola are ordinary, middle-class people. Viola’s fight against the establishment results in her gaining some notoriety in a surprising way, but Peter has few distinguishing characteristics other than a terrific study ethic. As I read “The Wages of Sin,” I waited for something to happen to justify the author’s choice of this couple as his gateway to this alternate world. Then I waited some more. I learned more than I cared to about how to make the stews that were the Williams’ usual nightly fare. And I learned about how students learned in 19th-century law schools. But overall, I was underwhelmed by the saga of Peter and Viola.

This book was much more enjoyable when the author described how life differed in his alternate version of England. The country remained Catholic since King Henry VIII died of AIDS before getting around to asking for the Church’s approval for a divorce. The American colonies were still part of the British Empire (although the author doesn’t go into great detail about how that happened). But when the author described the daily lives of British subjects in those days, I was hard-pressed to note many differences between actual history and Turtledove history. Stew making is stew making. A few trivial details were interesting, such as the recipients of letters had to pay the mail carrier three pence for the privilege. As an attorney, I probably found the description of law school more interesting than many other readers would. But much of the book just repeated the same few observations repeatedly.

The main problem with “The Wages of Sin” is the author’s framing device. This book would have been far more interesting had it been set in the mid-1500s or had the disease spread to Europe in the 1800s. In either case, the public’s fear and the government’s attempt to understand and control AIDS would have been far more compelling. By contrast, the disease here is a given, as are the adjustments in public life. Instead, we get an England similar to the modern-day America of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

“The Wages of Sin” doesn’t have as compelling a central theme as Turtledove’s Civil War books, and Peter and Viola aren’t as attractive as characters. The only reason to read this book is for the author’s predictions about how life would have differed because of the spread of AIDS centuries earlier than in real life. I’m giving the book a three-star rating and a mild recommendation, primarily for genre fans. “The Wages of Sin” are interesting, but readers have much better examples of Turtledove’s work on which to spend their wages.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.

[Silver Screen Videos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Few authors have been recognized as the unparalleled masters of a particular literary genre. At the top of that short list is Harry Turtledove, whose alternative histories include multigenerational sagas of an America in which the Confederacy won the Civil War and other tales in which magical creatures affected the course of history. His latest work, “The Wages of Sin,” lacks the eye-catching hook of many of his other books. Instead of a topsy-turvy Civil War, he asks what the world would look like if HIV had spread to Europe centuries before the medical tools existed to combat it. The premise has the potential to be just as fascinating as Turtledove’s other books, but a somewhat lackluster storyline dims its impact considerably.

In “Wages of Sin,” Portuguese slave traders brought HIV to Europe in the early 1500s, where the spread was dramatic. Most of the book is set in England in the 1850s. AIDS was referred to as the Wasting, and people knew how it spread but little else about the disease. To combat the disease’s spread, women were forced to wear concealing garments and veils in public to avoid inciting lustful ideas in men. (Real-world practices today are similar in some cultures.) Dating was non-existent; instead, English families arranged marriages for their children. However, brothels still flourish for those men seeking pleasure and willing to take a risk. To protect the rest of society, those who display the early symptoms of AIDS are branded with a “W” on their foreheads.

The protagonists of “Wages of Sin” are a young, engaged couple. Viola Williams is the daughter of the town doctor in Salisbury, a small distance over a day’s coach ride from London. Her fiancé, Peter Drinkwater, is the son of a local solicitor. For most of the book, he’s off at law school in London. She wants to be more than a housewife and is frustrated by the caste system in England. So, she reads and writes. He’s determined to stay on the straight and narrow and avoid the temptations his wealthy roommate succumbs to nightly at a local house of ill repute. They write each other letters that take a week to arrive. And they philosophize a lot.

If this plot description sounds somewhat bland, it is. Peter and Viola are ordinary, middle-class people. Viola’s fight against the establishment results in her gaining some notoriety in a surprising way, but Peter has few distinguishing characteristics other than a terrific study ethic. As I read “The Wages of Sin,” I waited for something to happen to justify the author’s choice of this couple as his gateway to this alternate world. Then I waited some more. I learned more than I cared to about how to make the stews that were the Williams’ usual nightly fare. And I learned about how students learned in 19th-century law schools. But overall, I was underwhelmed by the saga of Peter and Viola.

This book was much more enjoyable when the author described how life differed in his alternate version of England. The country remained Catholic since King Henry VIII died of AIDS before getting around to asking for the Church’s approval for a divorce. The American colonies were still part of the British Empire (although the author doesn’t go into great detail about how that happened). But when the author described the daily lives of British subjects in those days, I was hard-pressed to note many differences between actual history and Turtledove history. Stew making is stew making. A few trivial details were interesting, such as the recipients of letters had to pay the mail carrier three pence for the privilege. As an attorney, I probably found the description of law school more interesting than many other readers would. But much of the book just repeated the same few observations repeatedly.

The main problem with “The Wages of Sin” is the author’s framing device. This book would have been far more interesting had it been set in the mid-1500s or had the disease spread to Europe in the 1800s. In either case, the public’s fear and the government’s attempt to understand and control AIDS would have been far more compelling. By contrast, the disease here is a given, as are the adjustments in public life. Instead, we get an England similar to the modern-day America of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

“The Wages of Sin” doesn’t have as compelling a central theme as Turtledove’s Civil War books, and Peter and Viola aren’t as attractive as characters. The only reason to read this book is for the author’s predictions about how life would have differed because of the spread of AIDS centuries earlier than in real life. I’m giving the book a three-star rating and a mild recommendation, primarily for genre fans. “The Wages of Sin” are interesting, but readers have much better examples of Turtledove’s work on which to spend their wages.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.

[Lissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read a few books, and I've discovered that I either love them or dislike them. This book fell firmly into the "meh, don't care for it" category.

The premise should have been interesting, but I feel like a lot of the historical details that characterize Turtledove books are missing. I really didn't learn much about how the world might be different. There was the obvious "women are sequestered away from men and can only go out wearing garments like burqas" difference, but otherwise, there were just some bits and pieces thrown into the story. (King Henry VIII, for example, died of the Wasting, so England was still Catholic. Queen Victoria never reigned, so this isn't set in the Victorian era. Shakespeare never became famous, and Christopher Marlowe was held as the best playwright/author in English history.) But most details were about mundane things, like food (much more was told about food than greater historical events) and how one became a member of the bar. Meh.

I did mostly like Viola. She becomes an author and I liked that she was able to critique the society that was so hellbent on silencing her and other women.

As for Peter, I didn't care for him. I especially didn't after he went out and had sex with a prostitute. He was engaged to Viola, and his lack of fidelity aside, he literally exposed himself, Viola, and any children they might have to getting a horrible disease (AIDS - which has no cure, or even any way to be managed, back then). Viola frets constantly about the fact that she might die a horrible death because her husband couldn't keep his dick in his pants.

And that is why I only mostly liked Viola. In spite of Peter's betrayal, in spite of the fact that he might have the Wasting (HIV), she decided to marry him anyway - even though her father told her numerous times she could try someone else. But she figured most men were jerks and would potentially expose her anyway, so Peter was the least bad of the bunch. For a character who was relatively passionate, it felt odd that she didn't at least ream him a new one multiple times (which she never did - that letter she wrote to Peter after he confessed he'd visited a prostitute was tame).

I also hated how Viola kept apologizing for just being herself, an author, a woman with strong opinions, etc. By the end of the book, I wanted to wring both of their necks.

And I hated how beat down Viola was by the end. In spite of telling herself that she loves her husband (and he says that he loves her too), she's ever so grateful that he doesn't beat her. I just...ugh. Probably realistic of the times, but it still made me want to about vomit. Don't spend most of the book building up a strong character only for her to be grateful that her husband doesn't smack her around at the end.

I read Turtledove books because I like to see where his mind goes in alternate history situations. But I never felt like it went much of anywhere in this book. The idea is interesting, but the execution is lacking.

[Donna Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before reading this book, I had always enjoyed Harry Turtledove’s alternative history novels, which have a sci fi vibe and usually, a good dose of humor, sometimes of the laugh out loud variety. When I saw that this one was available, I leapt on it. What a freaking disappointment!

Nevertheless, my thanks go to NetGalley and ARC Manor Publishing for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The premise is that HIV—renamed The Wasting-- erupts in the early 1500s, but instead of dismissing it as a disease spread by gay men, English society sequesters its women in the home, never to be permitted friends or visitors, never allowed to go out and do their own shopping without extreme cloaking of bodies and faces, and extreme risk for committing the social sin of venturing out of the house. Viola is supposedly our protagonist, a young, intelligent woman of marriageable age who fumes under her constraints and entertains herself by reading her physician father’s collection of medical books.

Peter, whom we actually see a good deal more of, is the young man that the parents have arranged to marry Viola. The two of them are permitted to meet (in Viola’s home of course) in order to determine whether they are compatible. They are. Now Peter is off to university, and for the most part, we go with him.

Immediately we meet Peter’s obnoxious, wealthy roommate, who is masturbating when we encounter him. Turns out this guy never thinks of anything except sex. Peter is determined to wait for marriage because of the Wasting. There’s no treatment and there’s no cure; he doesn’t want it, and he doesn’t want to give it to Viola. His roommate, however, frequents brothels on an almost nightly basis and talks about it, graphically, interminably. Think of every vulgar, disgusting, disrespectful term you don’t want to know about women’s anatomy and the various sexual positions, and this jerk uses them all. All. The. Time. Repetitiously, constantly, and for no reason except, apparently, to make us hate him, which we do, and possibly as filler.

Have you ever known someone that makes up excuses to use objectionable language, because, see, they’re quoting someone? That’s how this feels to me.

There is no character development of any kind here. The book is short, but it feels interminable. I made it halfway through, then read the last twenty-five percent to be sure there wasn’t some redemptive element at the climax or the end. But there is no climax. There’s no story arc. For that matter, there are no gay people or bath houses, but hey, it’s alternative history, it’s fiction, and if Turtledove wants to leave out the gay people, he can do that.

But the disease? It comes from Africa. Oh, of course it does. Blaming the Black people for everything has apparently made it through from our time period to Turtledove’s invented world.

There is no redemptive feature to be found here, and frankly, the second star in my rating is there only as a wistful nod to this author’s earlier works. I recommend this book to anyone forced to purchase something for a horny, obnoxious male that wants a socially acceptable way to read porn. That’s it.

[Richard Derus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: A terrifying tale about HIV spreading in the early sixteenth century by an author, Publisher Weekly calls “The Master of Alternate History.”

What if HIV started spreading in the early 1500s rather than the late 1900s? Without modern medicine, anybody who catches HIV is going to die. A patriarchal society reacts to this devastating disease in the only way it knows it sequesters women as much as possible, limiting contacts between the sexes except for married couples. While imperfect, such drastic actions do limit the spread of the disease.

The ‘Wasting’ (HIV) has caused devasting destruction throughout the known world and severely limited the development of technology as well, creating a mid-nineteenth century England and London almost unrecognizable to us. This is the world Viola is born into. Extremely intelligent and growing up in a house full of medical books which she reads, she dreams of travelling to far-off places, something she can only do via books since her actions and movements are severely restricted by both law and custom.

Meticulously researched and exquisitely detailed in a way only a master like Harry Turtledove can do, this book is a tour-de-force from one of the best historical and alternate history writers ever to write in the genre.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Big ideas chopped to bits, tossed around some, then left to collapse where they collided. Are we in the 1509 Congolese-disease plot? The 1850s jerkoff's plot? (That is more literal than figurative here.) What made me read the book was Turtledove. Why I finished it was Turtledove. I disliked its underdeveloped alt-hist; I deeply disliked the crude and demeaning language, though both period and setting appropriate; I never felt as though, unlike a certain character, the story ever got near a climax as Viola and Peter, the straight people whose story I expected (not unreasonably) this to be, spend the entire story apart. Then, after a betrayal, a confession, and a shocking comeuppance(!), all conducted by letters between them, there's a wedding and...

...off you and I go. Contracts all fulfilled, we have a story that does the absolute bare-bones minimum. This can't be all, thought I, but indeed it was. Please note there is absolutely not more than one tiny whiff of gayness, of sodomy as an act, of the merest hint of the existence of queers at all. In three hundred pages about AIDS.

Now it's the poor straight women get all the fallout of the AIDS epidemic because, I guess, there weren't gay people in 1509 Congo (great, let's put the source of the STD plague in Africa...at least it's a change from South America's factual syphilis plague...then switch to straight people in whiter-than-white England! Ignoring Africa thereafter! It's the twenty-fucking-first century, colonialism is on the cross so let's drop it, k?)

So I think I'm being pretty magnanimous with two stars.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this novel. On the one hand, I was excited when I first learnt of the question this well-known author of alternative histories was asking. What if HIV had spread across the world 450 years before it did, with no modern medicines to treat or contain it? On the other hand, I found the vehicle for Turtledove’s tale, that of a young middle class couple, Peter and Viola, engaged to be married, somewhat underwhelming.

The novel opens in 1509 with Portugese seaman in Africa being infected by a woman captured for the slave trade and then sold in Europe. It then skips forward to England in 1851 where the virus is widespread and known as the Wasting. Society as we know it has changed and it is women who have suffered most. Girls are only free to play outside and mix with boys until they reach puberty and then they must be sequestered at home, not allowed to have employment apart from looking after the family and only venturing rarely outside clad in shapeless cloaks and veils, and when they do can expect to put up with catcalls and jeering, because men can’t be expected to control their carnal desires. Once sequestered, the only education girls receive is from their parents or reading books and with no opportunity to mix, marriages are arranged between families, with the couples meeting once to see if they might be compatible.

Peter, the son of a lawyer is taken to meet Viola, the daughter of a doctor with a view to becoming engaged before he is sent to Lincoln Inn’s Fields to study to become a barrister. There he must resist the call of the brothels frequented by his fellow students and remain a virgin until his marriage. Viola, bored with the confines of her home longs for women to have more freedom and especially to be able to travel, but all she can do is lose herself in travel books written by men and write letters to Peter.

I found the account of Peter’s law studies and Viola’s home life, while she waited for Peter, repetitive and not that interesting and felt it could have been dealt with more succinctly. However, I found the overall premise of this novel fascinating, especially when the author imagines changes that had great consequence due to historic figures and people of influence having died young or never being born at all. Such as Henry VIII succumbing to the disease before he could be divorced from Katherine, resulting in Britain remaining a Catholic country with Mary crowned Queen and no Elizabethan or Victorian eras. More of this type of thought-provoking type of speculation and a wider view of the effect of HIV on the world would have made the novel a more interesting read. 3.5★

With thanks to Arc Manor via Netgalley for a copy to read

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.

The Wages of Sin is a well written, chilling, insightful alternate history novel by Harry Turtledove. Released 12th Dec 2023, it's 288 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.

The author really has a talent for combining meticulous research as well as a thorough knowledge of character and real life human nature into a synergistic ability to write realistic and believable alternate history. That's pretty much the only description necessary. He's a moderately talented (occasionally sublime) author who writes very well and believably about the what-if alternate history where, in this case), HIV was unleashed and made the jump to humans in the 16th century and not the more modern day when humans were much more equipped (when pushed) to cope with/solve/cure it.

He treats his protagonists (a young couple, kept at a distance for reasons of health and safety) with depth and compassion. Viola is intelligent (even brilliant) but denied the opportunities to study and contribute due to her sex, and Peter is presented in a favorable light as well. There are *big* themes here, women's rights, human nature on a large scale, the ill-treatment of people with terminal illnesses, class disparity, and the development of technology and information in a very different society.

Four stars. It's a good book, a thought provoking and effective book.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Giving this 3 stars because it is a decent story, whereas initially I thought of giving it 2 stars, because it has little to nothing to do with *The Victorian Age* . Giving myself a chance to step back, and re-evaluate it, it should have been described as a Baroque or Jacobean story. The time presented sounds more like 1651, instead of 1851. *Crimson Petal and The White* this it is not. Nor is it like *Children of Men*

What it does come across as, is a combination of a young *Mary Shelley* attempting to become a writer of fantasy, while engaged to a young man whose story is inspired by *Tom Brown's School Days*

Thinking about it, after finishing it, *Anna Karenina* came to mind, as well as the novels of *Sarah Waters* all which biased my opinion - having read Tolstoy proved a worthwhile challenge - I was hoping for something worthwhile to chew on, alas I didn't find it.

I thought perhaps the author had some insights or observations - after close to forty-five years of real world history - that he wanted to present in a novel way. On that count, I was disappointed, and often left feeling confounded.

I found this to be yet another title that comes across as a YA Novel, and in spite of it being short, I was expecting a more mature approach. Perfectly good reading for someone who has never read much for history, or perhaps start a conversation in, say in AP English or Freshman English.

Did learn something new, the name used to describe the disease is a reference to a medieval poem I was unaware of before now.

Post-Note: Two other titles came to mind; *V for Vendetta* by *Alan Moore* and *The Handmaid's Tale* by *Margaret Atwood*. I think *Wages of Sin* would fit better within that world-view.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no question that HIV has been one of the most challenging viruses to confront humanity. The king of alternate history takes on what might have happened if it spread across the clobe earlier than the 1980s and 1990s. The slave trade and colonial era in the 1500s is used by Turtledove to spread the disease from the African continent. The book quickly jumps ahead to the 1800s, and the world has been faced with living with a disease (The Wasting) that is essentially a death sentence since medicine has not advanced enough to figure out how to prevent catching the illness, how to identify who is already infected, or how to possibly even consider curing someone of the virus.

In response, British society as taken the Victorian approach of covering women to protect the male sex from being tempted to the extreme. they are largely sequestered and prvented from interacting with men when not necessary. All marriages are arranged.

Since so many die from the disease, the arts, culture, science, and technology have all slowed in development. Many our great creators did not survive to make the major difference they did in our timeline.

The story is told from the perspective of two young adules whose family have formed a marriage arrangement. The reader expereinces what happens to them and those around them to see how horrible this disease really can be.

I really enjoyed this novel. I thought Turtledove did a good job of exploring the topic, though I would have preferred to have an Author's Note to help explain why he made certain choices when constructing this timeline. It was interesting to see that this progression avoids the concept of HIV?AIDS becoming a "gay disease" because it spread so broadly across the globe and across all sorts of popultions.

[Michael Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel is an interesting what if novel. Harry Turtledove is a popular author of alternative history genre of science fiction. Events in history typically fall into two possible outcomes. We all know what outcome occurred. In alternate history we see what happens if the second option occurred. It focuses on what the world would be like if the hiv epidemic had occurred 300 years before it actually did. The main story takes place in 1850’s Britain. In this timeline the country is catholic and the church has total control of society. Henry the VIII succumbed to the “wasting” as it is known. So no Protestant reformation. The American revolution never occurred so America is still a British colony. The story is told from the POV of the two main characters . Viola is a young woman who is a daughter of a doctor and lives a sheltered life. Young women are kept apart from males due to the disease and the belief that this is necessary to protect them. She’s bristling under this control and the caste system in Britain. She channels most of her energies into writing and is a budding writer. The other character is Peter. He is studying to be a lawyer so he can work with his father. Their respective families essentially organize what you would call an arranged marriage. This is something that they both reluctantly agree to. The novel shows a disturbing vision of the outbreak which many people can relate to in view of present day events. The people who are infected with the disease are completely ostracized from society and are literally branded as a warning for others. I’m a fan of this genre of sci-fi. It helps me to appreciate how things are today when I can see how they might have been worse

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Turtledove writes in a genre known as alternate history. The premise is to usually take an event in history and to wonder if something different had happened what the effect on the world would be. In The Wages of Sin, Turtledove creates a world where HIV was spread via the slave trade in the 1500s, then takes the reader to 19th-century England.

What if Henry VIII died of “The Wasting” (as it’s known) before he could separate England from the Roman Catholic Church? We find England to still be under the Papacy. When we could have Queen Victoria, we have King Michael III. Reacting to the spread of The Wasting, the patriarchy decided that all women should be sequestered away from men, locked like prisoners in their homes, only going out in groups and covered much the same way some Muslim sects use burqas.

In the city of Salisbury, a young woman resents the way things are. She resents being a prisoner, and she resents the way men are free to treat her like a piece of meat. Viola Williams is a doctor’s daughter and has access to books that stir her imagination. Her father also talks to her like more of a contemporary. Women do not choose their own spouses. Deals are brokered between families and her father reaches an agreement with his closest friend for Viola to marry his son, Peter. Peter is about to leave for London to study law like his father.

The industrial age has also not happened, and travel to London is still by stagecoach, making Peter’s return to visit his family any time during his law studies an impossibility. He’s an intelligent young man, and Viola does like him the one time they meet, so she agrees to the marriage. Her father does give her the final say. London, however, is very different than Salisbury and Peter is exposed to all kinds of temptation.

To read my full review, please go to: https://thoughtsfromthemountaintop.co...

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

What if the AIDS epidemic began during the Age of Discovery? With this intriguing question Harry Turtledove is off to the races again, constructing might-have-beens left and right. Unlike many of his novels, this one only has two protagonists - a couple whose engagement has been arranged by their family. The man, Peter, goes to study Law in London. His fiancée Viola wrestles with her independent streak in a world where women are shut up indoors and only go outside in a version of the Niqab. All fear the shadow of the Wasting, a horrid disease that often waits years to show itself and kills those who are promiscuous.

I am a big fan of Turtledove, and this book’s premise was interesting. Unfortunately, I found the story rather flat. The action occurred in England (no UK here), and dealt with the same handful of characters. We only hear about the changes in history in an offhand way. Henry VIII died of the Wasting (shocker), and Queen Mary succeeded him. What then? We only hear of it in passing. The present king is Michael III. Of what royal house we have no clue. England is still Catholic, although Protestantism is still a thing.

Without spoiling the plot, I will just say it ran along pretty much as I thought it would, with little surprise or excitement. I like my Turtledove more expansive, with a cast of protagonists showing me what their world is like.

[Ken Karcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Harry Turtledove for many years but up until now I've never seen a story that could have been more true than this novel. Having lived through the initial outbreak of AIDS, I can only imagine the horror if that had been released on the world 400 years earlier. We got a genuine feel for how those people managed against a terrible disease that perplexes modern medicine. Having medicine stuck in the 17 century is a wretched thought, it spreads its withering vines throughout the world and strangles it slowly and inevitably. I would have liked to hear more about the figures of history which would have been different because of dying earlier than on our earth, how rakes would become tragic footnotes to history never known because of that insidious disease. I liked the thought posing reading this book provides, this moves history in small, barely precieved increments in some ways much too familiar if left to ponder. My favorite fiction is that which reflects on real life and makes one wonder what if? This book does all that and so much more.

[Susan Ovans · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know who wrote the blurb that called this "a terrifying" read, but that person is either easily spooked or didn't read the book. The premise is certainly terrifying: that HIV has ravaged the world for 350 years by the time the Williams family and their friends attempt to live with "the Wasting" in Salisbury, England, in the 1860s. Although this is a global pandemic, Turtledove explores its consequences in surprisingly small scenes centered mainly on the daughter, Viola, and her fiancé, who–by virtue of being male–gets to spend two years as a law student in London. In real life, lots of fascinating things took place in London back then. But Turtledove doesn't mention any of it. His characters seemingly never speak of current events except for the disease. Excuse the pun, but after a while, I found The Wages of Sin deadly dull. Three stars, rounded up.

[Ronald Spitzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting premise for this book. Turtledove handled it in a way that is very effective and also a way I did not expect a first. Very well drawn characters and ones you can identify with. In a way, this is an ordinary life tale in a scary world that immorality has created. Human logic gives God the blame, but really it is sinful man's fault, not God's. Arrogance and selfishness of men lead to ruin and a society that is distorted. Important historical writers and science figures who are missing out of the culture tells you what happened to them, and how deprived culture became because of those individuals likely thinking "it can't happen to me" and of course it did. Hard impacting what if book. Recommended.

[Enreich · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a perfectly nice romance novel, but a not-very-good alternate history one.

The story, set in a world where HIV began centuries before it did in our world, doesn't really show us how the world has changed from this aside from a few mentions here and there (No Shakespeare, no Church of England, etc.). Instead the reader is treated to the admittedly cute romance between the two main characters in what is basically an arranged marriage.

The two characters are solid and fun to read, and their stories (Viola's journey to be a writer and Peter's studies to be a lawyer/public servant) are for the most part entertaining, though personally the section about Viola as a writer became a bit indulgent.

Overall, a nice romance but a poor alternate history.

[Ben James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Note: ARC provided by Arc Manor via NetGalley.

This is a book with an intriguing concept, but which tells the wrong story. After a brutal, eye-opening and confronting prologue, the novel switched to being a correspondence romance, as the two main characters do not much whilst exchanging letters. I found myself quickly bored as Peter does the same thing every chapter studying for law school, and Viola does the same thing every chapter writing a book and talking with her dad. And for a book about HIV, to not give either of the viewpoint characters the disease seems a missed opportunity to explore its devastating effects. A lot of potential but didn't live up to it.

[Dave Milbrandt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have found his previous titles to quite provocative, but this one, while the premise seemed interesting, did not engage me and I found it to be predictable (which is atypical for this author). It took me two tries to complete the book and much of the end was skimming. I am sure I missed some clever jokes in there (I got the Merchant of Venice variation), but this felt like a ghostwriter took an idea that Turtledove had and wove it into their own work. This is shorter and less grand in scope than his other works in a way that is sadly disappointing to the reader.

[W. Hackett · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating read

As with his prior efforts I find this to be a very thought provoking book. While Turtledove's formal education shows in most of his books it is his imagination that brings life to his characters and stories. In this latest "what if" much of his success lies with the female protagonist and his ability to see the world through her eyes. As a son, husband, father and grandfather I know this is no small task yet Turtledove succeeds where most men would stumble. Kudos!

[Russell Gross · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although I find Dr. Turtledove's writing excreble his stories are usually interesting and enjoyable. However this and his religious diatribe of his previous work I find almost unreadable. This book starts with an interesting premise and quickly goes nowhere. Unless he is a writing to vilify the Taliban treatment of women this book meanders to nowhere and is extremly boring. With liberal use of his catchphrases like "Tell me I'm wrong."he describes a vision of humanity which just isn't plausible. Temecula, really, give me a break.