Harry Turtledove continues to play with the history
of World War II in the latest volume of his “The War That Came
Early” series. The intriguingly titled Coup
d’Etat could refer to an action just about anywhere and given how
much the politics of this timeline have diverged, with the British and
French joining forces with the Germans against the Soviets, and
Turtledove takes his time identifying which country undergoes the
revolution, as well as the possibility of a domino effect as the
coup’s results spread across the war-torn world.
War, of course, is the primary activity of the
novel and Turtledove continues to give short exposure to a variety of
different theatres and mindsets, lacking only a character in a high
enough position to provide a thorough strategic overview of the men
slogging across Europe, Asia, and the Pacific rim.
Many times, these characters and their ordeals are
interchangeable, and, occasionally, tedious, reflecting the period in
war between the battles. These
characters’ have definers which set them apart from their comrades,
the marine who dated the taxi dancer, the German soldier sleeping with
the Jewish waitress, the Czech armed with an anti-tank sniper rifle.
It is the fact that Turtledove has created them as individuals
that makes their stories worth paying attention to among the military
movements.
While most of the novel follows the military
exploits of men across the world, the most evocative moments tend to be
those which look at relationships. Peggy Druce and her husband learning
how to be a married couple in a Philadelphia an ocean away from the war
which kept them apart in earlier books, Sarah Goldman discovering the
possibility of loving in a Münster in which Jews are denied all
semblance of human rights, or even Chaim Weinberg’s sham of a
relationship with La Martellita in Spain form the emotional crux of the
novel.
Turtledove is also willing to kill off his
characters, which not only provides tension to the narrative, but also
helps create the emotional impact. With
his vast casts of characters, some will always resonate more for any
given reader than others, but when they die, especially when multiple
characters die, it increases the stakes, especially when the deaths can
appear completely random in nature.
Coup d’Etat
is very definitely a middle book in a series.
All of the characters have seemingly been introduced and the
reader is dropped into the middle of the action.
Turtledove, as always, provides reminders of previous activity
and then moves through his kaleidoscopic view of this alternative World
War. Because of the length and complexity of the novel, not every story
comes with a payoff within the confines of the covers, but there will be
subsequent books in which Turtledove can reveal what he, and the fates,
have in store for his characters. Coup
d’Etat continues to build on the change Turtledove introduced in The
Big Switch and promises more changes will come in future volumes.
