Days of Infamy is a re-imagining of the Pacific War. The major difference being that the Empire of Japan not only attacks Pearl Harbor, but follows it up with the landing and occupation of Hawaii. The logic of how the battle could have developed in Oahu, including the destruction of Halsey's fleet, is presented in detail. As is usual in Turtledove novels the action occurs from several points of view. Besides historical figures these include a corporal in the Japanese Army, a surfer (who invents the sailboard so he can fish once Honolulu is occupied), Nisei children caught between the warring cultures, prisoners of war, and others. The way that control of the islands allows Japan to dominate much of the southern Pacific Ocean is explored, and the capure of a modern (for the time) radar system in noted. There is also a reverse Battle of Midway where an invading American force is defeated. Eventually, as was common in their other occupied territories, the Japanese create a puppet government, ruling through a member of the Hawaiian Royal Family who lives in the Iolani Palace.

The grand conflict for control of the continent of Derlavai rages on, in a battle with all the drama and terror of the Second World War - but for artillery and bombers, read magical fire and dragons. Yet hope may be dawning at last. The terrible onslaught of the conquering forces of Algarve - who power their battle magics with the life energy of their murdered victims - begins to founder as it runs into Habakkuk: a sorcerous ship of ice used by the embattled nations of Lagoas and Kuusamo to ferry their deadly dragons across the seas to war. But though the tide has begun to turn, the conflict is far from over. The widely disdained Kaunians still struggle desperately to escape as the Algarvians kill them by the thousands - for life energy, but also simply for the crime of being Kaunian. And as the death of innocent civilians on both sides continues to feed the flames of war, those who have struggled to survive and preserve their freedom have only their will to see them through...From Publishers WeeklyThe absorbing, character-centered fifth volume (after 2002's Rulers of the Darkness) in Turtledove's fantasy saga paralleling WWII ranks as the strongest yet in the series. WWII buffs will of course enjoy watching the equivalents of the Manhattan Project, D-Day, the great Russian offensives of 1944, the appearance of German secret weapons and the withdrawal of Romania from the Axis. And the author continues to handle the action, both magical and martial, as deftly as ever. But the heart of the volume is the characters who face predicaments and ethical challenges that are personal yet universal. Ealstan and his Kaunian wife, Vanai, are any young couple trying to love, give their child a safe, sane and reasonably sanitary life and get a good night's sleep-but in the midst of war and genocide. When the Kuusaman mage Pekka confronts her passion for the Lagoan sorcerer Fernao, she ends up hip-deep in problems that would roil a suburban pharmaceutical warehouse, let alone a sorcerous research center at war. Countess Krasta bears an illegitimate child after her brother, Skarnu, returns to a liberated Valmiera, and only the possibility that its father is a member of the local resistance keeps her from suffering the usual fate of female collaborators. Long but ultimately compelling, this book augurs well for the last volume and underscores Turtledove's astonishingly fertile imagination.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistThe massive fifth volume of Turtledove's Darkness saga will once again absorb the series' faithful following and be hard for newcomers to deal with. Fans will be moved that Ealstan and Vanai are finally parents, though at just about the time that a Forthwegian uprising makes their adopted hometown, Eoforwic, a battle zone. The Kuusaman mage Pekka and the Lagoan sorcerer Fernao finally become lovers in the midst of their progress toward making their superpotent, energy-releasing magic available to all. Meanwhile, Pekka's husband has found his own comforts aboard the ensorcelled, dragon-carrying iceberg Habbakuk (that name is a test for readers who fancy themselves World War II cognoscenti) and participates in the joint Kuusaman-Lagoan invasion of mainland Derlavai. Under Marshal Rather and a seasoned cadre of now-expert officers, the Unkerlanters advance in overwhelming strength, so that one suspects Ealstan's collaborationist cousin, Sidroc, isn't going to last much longer. Nor is the Algarvian major, Spinello, what with Vanai and Ealstan deciding that vengeance on him will be theirs--and soon. Turtledove is turning World War II upside down, much as he did the Civil War in two other series. But Darkness is more ambitious and dramatic, features more historic detail and well-developed characters, and has a darker tone. Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

At the bloody height of World War II, the deadliest enemies in all of human history were forced to put aside their hatreds and unite against an even fiercer foe: a seemingly invincible power bent on world domination. With awesome technology, the aggressors swept across the planet, sowing destruction as Tokyo, Berlin, and Washington, D.C., were A-bombed into submission. Russia, Nazi Germany, Japan, and the United States were not easily cowed, however. With cunning and incredible daring, they pressed every advantage against the invader's superior strength, and, led by Stalin, began to detonate their own atom bombs in retaliation. City after city explodes in radioactive firestorms, and fears grow as the worldwide resources disappear; will there be any world left for the invaders to conquer, or for the uneasy allies to defend? While Mao Tse-tung wages a desperate guerrilla war and Hitler drives his country toward self-destruction, U.S. forces frantically try to stop the enemy's push from coast to coast. Yet in this battle to stave off world domination, unless the once-great military powers take the risk of annihilating the human race, they'll risk losing the war.

When the Duke of Bari suddenly dies, the neighboring nation of Algarve, long seething over its defeat a generation ago in the Six Years' War, sees its chance to bring Bari into the fold...an action which the other countries surrounding Algarve cannot, by treaty, tolerate. As nation after nation declares war, a chain of treaties are invoked, ultimately bringing almost all the Powers of Derlavai into a war of unprecedented destructiveness.For modern magic is deadlier than in ears past. Trained flocks of dragons rain explosive fire down on defenseless cities. Massed infantry race from place to place along a network of ley-lines. Rival powers harness sea leviathans to help sabotage one another's ships. The lights are going out all across Derlavai, and will not come back on in this lifetime.Against this tapestry Harry Turtledove tells the story of an enormous cast of characters: soldiers and generals, washerwomen and scholars, peasants and diplomats. For all the world, highborn and low, is being plunged by world war...into the darkness.Amazon.com ReviewHarry Turtledove is known for his alternate histories; from The Guns of the South to The Great War: American Front, he's practiced at imagining the ways society would have changed if various things had been different in history. Sometimes it's a key figure surviving (or dying); other times it's a strange new variable, like aliens landing during World War II. With Into the Darkness, Turtledove investigates a new wrinkle in this successful field: What if a world war were fought using magic?Although Into the Darkness doesn't take place on Earth, the characters are humans, and they react in plausible ways. In fact, the uses of magic for political ends are eerily similar to the ways weapons have been used to wage cold wars in our own world. And as the magic grows more powerful, the destructive cost of war to the people of Derlavai grows as well. This is no enchanting fantasy world where kindly old wizards use their magic to kill dragons and save fair maidens. Turtledove has envisioned a place where the humans are decidedly political and greedy, and where magic is just a way of getting what you want. --Adam FisherFrom Publishers WeeklyWar is hell and its chaos is a precarious foundation for supporting the sprawl of this epic fantasy. Paralleling the approach of his bestselling alternative histories, Turtledove (Guns of the South, the Worldwar series, etc.) imagines a civilization reminiscent of medieval Europe, save that sorcery is an accessible power harnessed for military use. In the land of Derlavai, armies tap the energy of ley lines for firepower, train dragons to drop incendiary eggs and commandeer leviathans for submarine warfare. Troubles begin when the armed forces of Algarve invade the kingdom of Forthweg to reclaim territories partitioned from them a generation before. Neighboring Unkerlant follows suit, occupying the remainder of Forthweg and competing with Algarve for control of the balkanized duchies drawn into the fray. Turtledove builds a panoramic narrative from the experiences of a cast of hundreds intended to represent a cross-section of Derlavian society, including inexperienced student Ealstan, sensible foreign minister Hajjaj, decadent marchioness Krasta, noble officer Rather, and Vanai, a descendant of the fallen Kaunian culture whose pervasive presence throughout Derlavai lends events an aura of fatalism. Cogently rendered scenes in which these and other characters display the extremes of cowardice and heroism induced by life during wartime give the novel a Tolstoyan sweep, yet never gel into anything resembling a cohesive plot. Dizzying shifts of viewpoint capture the convulsive character of combat but make allegiances hard to keep straight. Even the spectacular war scenes, described with frontline immediacy, become repetitive and generic. Like the casualties that crowd its pages, this novel sometimes seems a victim of overly complicated designs. Author tour. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Soviet Union won the Cold War. The Russians were a little smarter than they were in our own world, and the United States was a little dumber and a lot less resolute. Now, more than a century later, the world's gone Communist, and capitalism is a bad word. For Gianfranco and his friend Annarita, a couple of teenagers growing up in Milan, life in a heavily regimented, surveillance-rich command economy is just plain dreary. The eventual withering-away of the state doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. Annarita's a hard-working student and a member of the Young Socialists' League. Gianfranco is a lot less motivated--but on the other hand, his father's a Party apparatchik. The biggest excitement in their lives is a wargame shop called The Gladiator, which runs tournaments, and stocks marvelous complex games you can't find anywhere else. Then, abruptly, the shop is shut down. Someone's figured out that The Gladiator's games are teaching...

In an extraordinary saga of nations locked in war, master storyteller Harry Turtledove tells the story of World War II, which begins over Czechoslovakia rather than Poland, eleven months earlier than it really came. Now we have the final installment in Turtledove's landmark World War II series. Hitler's Plan A was to win in a hurry, striking hard and deep into France. There was no Plan B. Now the war grinds on. Countries have been forced into strange alliances. The Nazis fortify thin lines with Hungarian and Romanian troops. England, finding its footing after the suspicious death of Winston Churchill and a coup d'état, fights back in Europe and on the seas of the North Atlantic. Jews fight on both sides of the war--in secret in German uniform, openly in Spain, France, and Russia. Into the standoff come new killing tools, from tanks to bazookas. In the Pacific, Japan prepares bombs filled with macabre biological concoctions to be dropped on Hawaii. For...

In the final book of the blistering trilogy The Hot War, old hatreds and new chances for revenge are unleashed on an already devastated world—as the Cold War becomes a roaring inferno. In 1952 American cities lie in ruins. President Harry Truman, in office since 1945, presides over a makeshift government in Philadelphia, suffering his own personal loss and fearing for the future of democracy. In the wake of Hitler's reign, Germany and America have become allies, and Stalin's vise-hold on power in the USSR persists. Unwilling to trust the Soviet tyrant, Truman launches a long-planned nuclear strike on the city of Omsk—killing Stalin and plunging the Red Army into leaderless, destructive anarchy. Meanwhile, the Baltic states careen toward rebellion and Poland is seized by rebels bred on war. In a world awash with victims turned victors, refugees, and killers, has Truman struck a blow for peace or fueled more chaos? As these staggering events unfold, the...

Two rivals must unite to prevent a disgraced malevolent god from attaining a relic of extraordinary power in the first book of alternate history master Harry Turtledove's magnificent fantasy trilogy More than four centuries ago, the Scepter of Mercy was lost to the king of Avornis, and each subsequent liege has promised—and failed—to return the powerful talisman to its rightful home. Now, young Lanius, the only surviving son of King Mergus, rules, though he is considered illegitimate and must abide by the decisions of regents. Still, the legacy of the missing scepter ultimately belongs to him. But it is also coveted by the Banished One, an immortal exiled by the other gods, who invades the world of men through their dreams. Lanius, with no talent or heart for battle, must keep those in the sway of the malevolent deity from Avornis's borders. To this end, Lanius requires the help of Grus, a fearless and respected captain of the king's navy. But Grus has...