Moon of Ice

by Brad Linaweaver

Thirty years after the Nazis win World War II, Hilda Goebbels, the daughter of Hitler's propaganda minister and now a world-famous anarchist, threatens to release her father's long-suppressed diaries--which could destroy the Reich. Reprint.

Genres: Alternate History, Science Fiction, Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1988

Reviews

[Josh Weiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read when it's told in the diary reminiscences of Joseph Goebbels and his daughter Hilda. One particular creative gem is a Steven Spielberg's counterpart in Germany who makes Indiana Jones with the Nazis as the heroes. Another thing I've never seen in a victorious Axis Powers novel is Hitler giving the Burgundy region to Himmler and the SS, which is used as an archaic country with occult rituals and gruesome genetic experiments. Overall, the first person writing is fantastic while the third person narrative is pretty much incoherent drivel.

[Elliott · Rating 1 out of 5]

A really stupid moment in this book goes something like this: an emigre is talking about how great the United States is, references a homeless person starving and says that at least in the United States the government doesn't shoot its citizens.
Here is a good test: if at any point a novel has to use the old Midwestern expression: 'Things could be worse,' where 'worse' is Nazi Germany you know that that novel has failed (though there is an exception for actual death camp survivors). This is because functionally nearly everything can be said without very much effort at all to be better than Nazis. Canker sores are better than Nazis; bee stings are better than Nazis. If I slam a finger in the door I can say out loud to everyone around me: "Well, that sure hurts like the dickens but, hey, it beats Nazi Germany!" and hardly anyone will disagree with me. That's because I have really said nothing at all. Brad Linaweaver was clearly attempting a novel of ideas and his attempt to sell his vision of a better world amounts to a meaningless comparison to Nazi Germany, misogyny: waitresses can serve good tippers in the nude, and that in this world I could own my very own sidewalk. All this is even supposing such a world would be at all possible, which let's stop being naive-capitalism at work is the 1929 stock market crash, or the more recent 2008 crash. Capitalism works as well as it's going to and it frankly doesn't work that well at all.
Such quibbles aside, it's hardly realistic that a world where Nazi Germany has emerged victorious from World War 2 would produce a libertarian utopia instead of a more likely copycat fascism in the U.S.
This is a really unsuccessful novel on multiple fronts.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

One thing I have noticed is that "alternative histories" that speculate about what the world would have been like if Nazi Germany had won World War II (or at least survived) tend to be surprisingly mediocre. This was a notable exception because Linaweaver's story was much more plausible than most I have read, and that kept me interested. I read the novella version of "Moon of Ice" before I read this book, and while both were better than the truly dreadful "The Man in the High Castle" (truly the gold standard in the category of pointless, boring writing) I though the novella version was a crisper, more engaging story.

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's no denying it's a good page turner, even if up to a point. Linaweaver first taking us through Goebbels' daughter's diaries, that he imagines having become a Libertarian, is fun yet captivating. Playing then the same game all over again but with Joseph Goebbels' quickly appear, however, as over stretching it.

That's indeed where things start falling apart -the plot revolving around a so called 'bombshell' Hilda Goebbels is about to reveal and, the bombshell in question turning out to be quite a silly and unbelievable thing (in a nutshell and so as not to be a spoiler: an evil scientist dreaming of evil deeds, of course by associating himself with some Nazis).

It's a pity as, the lot had amazing potential. Indeed, besides the idea of playing with diaries, the stupid occult beliefs of pagan SS contrasting with astronomical science could have made a very good feed to a nice story. As it is, the plot reveals itself to be poor.

Having said that, the parallels drawn between Goebbels and his daughter, two lives taking two completely different turns because of different political views, remains a nice take. This at least, makes 'Moon od Ice' readable.

[Benjamin Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A simply awesome novel who's 'what if' history of the post World War II world proves vastly more imaginative and refined than Philip K. Dick's acclaimed but lackluster 'The Man in the High Castle'.

[Darren · Rating 1 out of 5]

A few interesting ideas, but slow and rambling.

[Michael Jarrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty good alt-history novel and I enjoyed it quite a bit. My only quibble with it is that I would have liked to have seen much more of the America in the book.

[Abu Dhabi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good.

[Tvermar · Rating 3 out of 5]

liked this one - 3.5 stars