Breakthroughs

Great War #3

by Harry Turtledove

A Main Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club, Breakthroughs is the third installment of best-selling author Harry Turtledove’s The Great War series of remarkable alternate histories. As the frightening war to end all wars continues to spread with vengeance around the globe, the swiftly modernizing armies of the Confederacy and the United States battle for control of the North American continent.

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

584 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2000

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

[Nadienne Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A World War One where the victors are both the German Empire and the United States of America? How is that possible, you ask? Well, you'll just have to read the book. :)

Seriously, though, the idea of the "Great War" - the "War to End All Wars" - being fought, at least in part, by the United States of America on one side (the losing side in our timeline) against the Confederate States of America on the other (the winning side in our time) tickles my senses in so many ways. The intense and unending rivalry between the North and the South, leading to outright hatred between two peoples who are fundamentally the same, is just amazing.

Of course, throughout the war, there are some characters who died who I genuinely felt the pang of loss over, and some characters who lived who I'd rather have dead (and I'm not referring to Mr. Featherston). My heart aches for the Congaree Socialist Republic, but I'm a "dirty Red" myself, so seeing my fellow proletariat cut down in such a way fills me with sorrow. Equally, George Enos sudden absence from the story - especially at the hands of Mr. "Full-of-Himself" Kincaid - actually made me quite sad.

I wasn't really too keen on MacGregor's storyline...I mean, I guess it shows how the "average Canadian" is dealing/coping with the occupation, but at the same time, I really didn't feel like it went anywhere or said anything that needed saying...and as I have children watch Peter Rabbit, any farmer named MacGregor will always invoke that cartoon in my mind.

The entire Great War series makes for excellent reading, particularly if one is into Alternate Histories, I would highly recommend it.

[Nathan Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good conclusion to the great war trilogy.

[Conor Brandt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is what this series should’ve been. Characters are in interesting places doing interesting things, the end of World War 1 is messy and anticlimatic. The next war is on the horizon, and not everybody lives. Turtledove in this book finally figured out how to write characters who aren’t plot caricatures.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harry Turtledove has delivered again another amazing piece literature. The United States are pushing their Confederate counter parts back. Germany is pushing France hard and England is on the brink of starvation. Th recent Red Negro uprising that took place has allowed the Americans to push their lines. General George Armstrong is organizing a plan with the new barrel (tank) technology. Jefferson Pinkard, a former steel worker conscripted into the Army is now currently fighting in the Confederate state of Texas. Reginald Bartlett, a Virginian who joined the army in the beginning of the war and is fighting a desperate fight to keep the Americans from completely occupying all of the Confederate state of Sequoya (Oklahoma). George Enos, an ex fishermen who joined the navy a little into the war so as not to get conscripted. Sylvia Enos, the wife of George. Anne Colleton, a wealthy plantation owner who lives in South Carolina. Her plantation was hit hard when the red uprising broke out. Roger Kimball a submarine skipper from a farm in Alabama. McSweeny, A firm Presbyterian who's only will is to serve God and bring Justice upon those who have humiliated the United States. Irving Morrell, former member of the war department, former leader of a machine gun unit that fought in the Dominion of Canada, now a leader of a unit of barrels. Nellie Semproch, A widow living in occupied Washington D.C. General George Armstrong Custer is the leader of the First army fighting in Tennessee. The fighting has stalled and he needs to make a big breakthrough towards Nashville. With his Trusty adjutant Abner Dowling he sneaks a plan through the war department and assembles the necessary machines to implement his plan. With Irving Morell at the head of this operation everything is going perfectly. Nellie has been working at her coffee shop in D.C but also working as a spy. McSweeny is a Corporal fighting in Arkansas with his trusty flame thrower. Now all of that is simply the tip of the ice berg. I did not do the book the justice it rightly deserves and I do not believe I truly can but this is an excellent book. If you like this genre you should definitely give this a try. Mr.Turtledove keeps the story interesting and keeps the characters felling like their alive. It truly is a brilliant book.

[Oleksiy Kononov · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really nice conclusion for the trilogy. I liked the way Turtledove used alternate history within alternate history, when his characters talk about what-have-beens (the War of Secession won by the US, Entente winning WWI etc.). He turned real history, as we know it, into fictional alternate history in the book. Also, the author used real facts from the American Civil War history, WWI history to create his version: CSA losing due to scarce resources, lack of manpower and the red rebellion in the Congaree (apparently appealing to the real situation in Germany in 1918). Enlisting of black soldiers by the CSA as a mirror image of actual events during the Civil War. A lot of analogies with the Allies's sentiments and humiliating peace terms imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. CSA is devastated in all respects, crippled, suppressed and humiliated, thinking of revenge. I've been criticizing first two books for "improbable turns of events" suggested by the author, but Breakthroughs has made up for all those.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

Same problems as before. Each vignette essentially rehashed the same thing about each character each time. The next series (after the end of WWI) seems genuinely interesting, and it's a measure of how bloody cumbersome I found these books that I'm not going to check it out.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The American Front" -- the motives of the war.
"Walk in Hell" -- the machinery of the war.
"Breakthroughs" -- the fallout of the war.

At the end of the war, the characters who fought in "Breakthroughs" are divided into two diverse camps. In one is the Let's Never Do This Again Camp. Some here wanted to punish the losers, preventing them from rising again, and others wanted to refrain from doing so. "Let them hate, as long as they fear." The other camp is the "Let's Get This War Behind Us So We Can Get Thinking About the Next One." I think bitterness runs deep in both.

Comparisons from WWI to today:

I saw a comparison in the book between the Socialist and Democratic Parties and today's Democratic and Republican Parties.

The coal board bureaucracy reminded me of LIHEAP, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, and Unemployment. Don't even get me started about trying to get Social Security Disability.

Back in WWI, a woman would lose her job to take off work to take care of her child/loved one. Despite current laws, this still happens today. If she works full-time, she will get paid only until her paid leave runs out. If she works part-time, she will get paid leave for the time off. There is no guarantee she will have a job when she comes back.

Wages rose but so did everything else, sometimes higher than the wages.

[Bli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breakthroughs, in my opinion, isn't so good because of its combat, but rather for how it handles the war's effects upon the peoples of different lands. It covers all these facets of daily life, from the women factory workers, to the blacks, the socialists, and even the foreigners who slowly adapt to American rule. Turtledove really does this well by having one or two characters from each area of life, save the US military, covering all the different aspects of life as well as all parts of the American Front. I personally enjoyed the perspective of a certain Lucien Galtier, who, as the story progresses, goes from a person who takes pride in being a Frenchman, a Canadian, to someone who learns that Americans aren't all the devils they're made out to be, and eventually makes peace with the fact that perhaps things were going to be different from now on. This book, and the ones previous to it, really show the people's struggles to adapt and survive in these war conditions, which is something that this series does better than its competitors, and makes Breakthroughs, and to an extent A Walk In Hell, a good book.

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this novel, Harry Turtledove wraps up his alternate-history saga of the first World War. My one piece of advice here is to use the map at the front of the novel and use it often. I did, if for nothing else than to keep track of where everyone was.

The premise of the series is that the Confederacy won its bid for freedom during the Civil War, and for the third time in fifty years, they go head-to-head with the United States. This time is different: the United States has as its ally the powerful German and Austrian armies. The Confederacy is aligned with Canada, Great Britain, France, and Russia (with the Japanese thrown in for a good skirmish every now and again).

After finishing the previous novel, The Great War: Walk In Hell, which felt like I was sitting through extra innings at a zero-zero baseball game, it was refreshing to finally see some movement in the war effort. Just who begins making the breakthroughs? Well, I won’t spoil it for you.

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

[A.C. Thompson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried, oh how I tried, to struggle my way through this book to see how it ended. The more I read, the more I discovered I was having to force myself to pick it back up again. And the more I read, the more I disliked the characters. Not just a few of the characters, either. I mean every. Single. One. By the time I fought my way through to page 226, I just didn’t care any longer who won the war. So, this book has been relegated to my growing Did Not Finish shelf.

The whole point of reading a book about war is to sympathize with the struggles the characters are thrown into, and to find out who wins in the end, and why. The problem with the characters here, though, is that I grew to hate them ALL. The ones I liked in the beginning revealed that they lacked any and all redeeming qualities, so I no longer cared what happened to them.

I’ve already purchased the entire Worldwar series by Mr. Turtledove. Hopefully, it won’t be this disappointing.

[Christopher Lutz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great War ends, and it’s a bittersweet for nearly everyone involved, as War is a messy business, even in this alternate reality. Harry Turtledove concludes this chapter of the Southern Victory series with the promise of much more conflict to come. Overall a great story with only a couple issues. At the risk of being too crude, the fact that literally every major character was constantly horny got old really fast. By the end multiple character arcs seemed to revolve around the question of “will they get laid?” Also, Jake Featherston as a confederate copy/paste future Hitler strikes me as a silly parallel. There certainly could’ve been more creative ways to explore the potential rise of fascism in the south in this reality.

All that aside, I really enjoyed the conclusion to this era of the story. One thing’s for sure: in our timeline, this was the “War to End All Wars,” in this version, the war has only just begun.

[Chad Malkamaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've actually been surprised by this series. I'll be honest I held off of reading Turtledove because I was afraid the books would be too pro-Southern, too racist, too white supremacist to read. I give Turtledove credit, his speculative alternate history plays out well, as far as you could see his imaginative world happening if one or two things in history would have played out different. Now there is all the -ists I mentioned above, but Turtledove does seem to place those within the context of history, and of course what we see playing out on the streets of the 21st century, these are still issues we have not solved and may never solve, so the attitudes of people in a world where the Confederacy won the Civil War, won a second war, and are pitted against the US during the time period of WWI, there are going to be good people, evil people, with various attitudes and Turtledove does seem to give equal context to their feelings and attitudes.

[Ernesto Oporto · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am taking a star off because his naval scenes are full of errors. Also there are quite a few gramatical errors in the books that he (or his descendants) publish.
A Captain of a ship, no matter if it is an airplane carrier of a PT boat, does not take the wheel, not does his First Officer. A seaman is at the wheel. In the age of sail it took up to six seamen to handle the ships rudder, which was a double wheel.
Apart from that his series of alternate history are wonderful books to read, his characters are realistic and act according to their spycological makeup.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Turtledove is the master of alternate history. I would give this book 3.5 stars, sometimes it’s a little slow. I thought I heard a rumor that the writers of Game of Thrones were going to make a series out of these books but it was squashed because the books use the n word a lot. Anyway, interesting to get the perspective of the US losing the Civil War and the ensuing global results of that loss. I’m a huge fan of Turtledove’s, so I will keep reading the next series in this alternate history.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I've said before in my reviews of these novels, I enjoy an alternate history novel, and though I have my issues with Turtledove's writing, namely that's it's often too slow, he also has created a fleshed-out world and does a nice job of furthering the overall storyline. I'll probably slowly keep on with the Southern Victory series.

[Matt Morrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story and characters

This series gripped me from the get go. I loved reading from the perspectives of so many varied characters. However, at times i felt it dragged on a bit, and there were SO MANY characters it was easy to lose track of what was happening with each.

[George Flannary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read

Still wish more about what was happening in Europe was mentioned. Otherwise, I can’t put it down. I read it in about a week

[Ellen Broadhurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read because my son was reading the series. Not really my preferred genre, but overall an interesting work of fiction.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great follow up to the 2 previous volumes and transition to the new series.

[Scott Gardner · Rating 4 out of 5]

best of the three books in the starting series , Usa wins the war , CSA beaten down , and the series will move on to the interwars years

[Jahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

goog book

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid climax to this arc. Entertaining from start to finish

[Michael Toleno · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the 4th book of an 11-book series. Very entertaining and packed with interesting twists on history from after the American Civil War until the end of World War II. I'm saving the four- and five-star rating for weightier material.

[Wise_owl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I can say about 'Breakthroughs' that wasn't also true of the previous two installments in this series. It has a few interesting turns, and not alot of them I can talk about without disclosing the entirety of the books.

In short, this deals with the alternate history in which the South Won the Civil War, and now, in the 1910's, The English, French, Confederates and Russians wage off against the German-Austria-American alliance.

At this junction the war finally 'turns' and the stalemate begins to end. Both sides, the victor and the loser, begin to deal with the impending inevitability of the war. There are quite a few obvious historical 'nods' to those who know the history of what comes. For example, through the entirety of the series Turtledove has obviously been setting up a particular low-ranking character as a future 'hitler' analogue. Some characters we've walked through three books with die. Some return but injured or damaged in one way or another. Both civilians and those in the military. It's actually the former, those dealing with issues of occupation, of loved ones far away, of the changing realities imposed upon life in general that I find most interesting. The period following the Great War in our time line was fraught with social and political changes and this book, while doing a great job of 'capping' the series in terms of the War ,made me all the more curious to see how these changes would play out in a very different world, with a very different history.

Basically if you liked the series to this point, Turtledove isn't going to let you down.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1026099.html[return][return]The book is the third of a trilogy about an alternate history war ending in 1917, where the US and Germany are fighting a bitter trench combat against Britain/Canada, the Confederate States of America fifty years after their victory in the War of Secession, and France. All the action takes place on or near the North American continent. The major one of the "Breakthroughs" of the title is the penetration of Confederate lines on the Kentucky/Tennessee front by the US army's new battle machines (known as "barrels" rather than "tanks" in this world), under the command of septuagenarian George Armstrong Custer, as a result of which the Confederate front collapses, the US re-occupies Washington, annexes chunks of Canada and declares Quebec independent, and the war and the book both end.[return][return]Turtledove has about a dozen viewpoint characters, telling the story from the point of view of the military and civilians affected by the war. US president Teddy Roosevelt pops into the narrative now and then, and the defeated CSA president appears at the end, but on the whole this is the story of the little people. It is detailed and well worked out, but didn't quite grab me as much as I was hoping. I very much enjoyed Turtledove's Hugo-winning novella "Down in the Bottomlands", and wonder if the discipline of the shorter form enables him to concentrate quality rather better than in a trilogy of 650-page books.

[Wade]

Finally the long slog is over. It took three months of my life to finish these three books while I was in a WW1 period and by the third book I felt like it was a challenge more than anything, what it must have felt like to fight WW1. Turtledove takes us through the fictional WW1 on American soil in excruciating detail following numerous characters on all fronts and aspects of the war. I wonder over and over if its effective to document a war that never happened in such fine detail and I alternated between being enamored and bored stiff. The Anne characters just got downright annoying toward the end, and the book really lacked any build up or action until the breakthrough which was even then pretty anti-climatic. His portrayals are well thought out and accurate and painful to read about the racism of this period. His ideas are innovative but they book just seemed to slow, long, and did I mention slow at time. One redeeming aspect was the death of a key character at the end. I then understood a lot of the slow scenes regarding this character and his family, the daily slaughter that went on for years gets filtered through this one man and the sadness resonates. It is with that character that I think the author did his best work and showed that like the real WW1 the slaughter was so great that you have to view it on a personal side. Finishing this series more like an life milestone than a book finished, pfeuh, time to move on.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a review of the whole "Great War" Trilogy.

Harry Turtledove, often billed as the "Master of alternate history," delivers a comprehensive and engaging version of WWI in which the Civil War was won by the CSA, and the USA sides with Germany.

His in-the-trenches perspective of the major changes in how wars were fought is dramatic and accurate. From the introduction of chemical warfare, airplanes, tanks, and submarines to the rise of communism, the evolution of espionage, and the dramatic change in strategic thought, he thoroughly captures, in the intertwined narratives, how the face of the world was changed by war in the early twentieth century.

Regrettably, Turtledove has the annoying quirk of overusing descriptive language, by the third book it became clear that every single man in the USA who had gone through puberty was sporting a "Kaiser Bill moustache". There are other examples, but this is the one that frustrated me the most.

Overall though, a good trilogy that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

[The other John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This sucks! No, not the book. The book is quite well written and interesting. In it, Mr. Turtledove wraps up the First World War. Well, the first world war of this particular alternate reality. You know, the one where the South had won the Civil War. Now the USA and CSA are fighting across the trenches, just like the European powers. Like the previous volumes of the trilogy, Mr. Turtledove tells the tale from the perspective of a variety of people: soldier and civilian; rich and poor; damnyankee, reb and canuck. That's where the problem lies. Some of those plot threads end somewhat happily, others, not so well. One... ah, one just sucks. It's good writing. It shows an important facet of life during wartime but... I won't spoil the surprise. I hated it. Still, seeing how I have the other two volumes of the trilogy, I'll track down a copy of this one to put on my shelf. sigh....

[Gary Letham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book three of this trilogy, brings us to the end of the Great War in North America. The end looms for the Confederacy and Canada, and it dosent look good. The Norths tactic of massed tank warfare breaks the back of the South and Canada. The stalemate is shattered, even with the South using black troops to fill their numbers, the game is already lost. The storyline of some of the characters ends tragically, others come across a certain peace, but undoubtedly the social upheaval will put paid to that in the upcoming trilogy. All in all this has been a satisfying read, fanny in places, the term roof rabbit for cat meat in the restaurant made me chuckle, and unbearably heartbreaking in others. Highly recommended.

[Andrea Bampi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not surprisingly, the final book of the series is definitely the worst one.
A typical Turtledovian "last installment" - more than one third of the book spent just to summarize all subplots is frankly ...too much. The storyline begins to (really) advance after about 200 pages, but there's nothing actually surprising, all the interesting ideas were given away in the first books - the conclusion (of course widely open to another follow-up) was 100% predictable since book 2.
Anyway, historical quality and character development are good as usual - again, you always know what to expect when you start reading HT. Some solid alternate history. Just too long, like a good scotch too heavily diluted...