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Has anyone read Turtledove's Through Darkest Europe and could volunteer a review?

Hendryk

Taken back control yet?
Published by SLP
Location
France
In Harry Turtledove's 2018 novel Through Darkest Europe, a divergence in medieval theology resulted in the emergence of a progressive, democratic and prosperous Muslim cultural sphere, while European Christendom remains an economically and socially backwards region wracked by religious intolerance.

I haven't read it, but I would interested in reading a review from one of us.

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Haven't read it myself - have not picked up a Turtledove novel in over a decade - but out of interest I did a quick search for reviews online about it.

The results were... not encouraging.

Two standalone review sites which are generally receptive to AH gave this book quite negative reviews (Publishers Weekly and Manhattan Book Review). Goodreads was rather damning of it (average 3.35 rating, and negative reviews seem to outnumber the positive ones). Amazon wasn't all that positive by Amazon standards either.
 
The PW review mentions "allegorical novel that swaps clichéd ideas of Europe and the Islamic world" as a negative, but that seems like q reason you would buy a book like this, but I think I see the flaw via one Goodreads review: "felt about 200 pages longer than it actually was, and should have been 200 pages shorter to really shine". And this feels like an idea that, if you're not being very very serious and detailed, is a short paperback running on energy and with tongue-in-cheek.
 
The PW review mentions "allegorical novel that swaps clichéd ideas of Europe and the Islamic world" as a negative, but that seems like q reason you would buy a book like this, but I think I see the flaw via one Goodreads review: "felt about 200 pages longer than it actually was, and should have been 200 pages shorter to really shine". And this feels like an idea that, if you're not being very very serious and detailed, is a short paperback running on energy and with tongue-in-cheek.
"It should have been 200 pages shorter" summarizes quite a lot of Turtledove's work.
 
Turtledove has a problem where alot of his stuff I want to try and read but then I remember that its Turtledoove and remember feeling that I will be dissapointed.
 
Turtledove has a problem where alot of his stuff I want to try and read but then I remember that its Turtledoove and remember feeling that I will be dissapointed.

Turtledove is best at individual set-pieces, which is why his reputation with short stories is better than his with longer fiction. With longer novels he's more erratic, and with series, well..... yeah.

Plus I think that for all he's gotten labeled "the master of alternate history", his heart really wasn't in it that much.
 
The PW review mentions "allegorical novel that swaps clichéd ideas of Europe and the Islamic world" as a negative, but that seems like q reason you would buy a book like this, but I think I see the flaw via one Goodreads review: "felt about 200 pages longer than it actually was, and should have been 200 pages shorter to really shine". And this feels like an idea that, if you're not being very very serious and detailed, is a short paperback running on energy and with tongue-in-cheek.

That could be a review of every full-length Turtledove novel.
 
Turtledove is best at individual set-pieces, which is why his reputation with short stories is better than his with longer fiction. With longer novels he's more erratic, and with series, well..... yeah.

Plus I think that for all he's gotten labeled "the master of alternate history", his heart really wasn't in it that much.
I get the feeling he just runs out of ideas. That and also turtledove is, for better or for worse, the closest thing to a mainstream AH author
 
I get the feeling he just runs out of ideas. That and also turtledove is, for better or for worse, the closest thing to a mainstream AH author

I can defend some of Turtledove's choices on the grounds that having to write for a broad audience who isn't the most knowledgeable about history means you need to be different than someone who writes for an audience of enthusiasts, but I think even from that standpoint a lot of his stuff just isn't that great.
 
Can confirm with Ruled Brittania that my knowledge of Elizabethan England was 80% what I learned in Year 5 and from Horrible Histories and all the stuff about Spain was new to me, and I still felt "could lose 100 pages and I absolutely mean on top of cutting the sex scene I just read"
 
I have to admit my personal reason to not wanting to read more Turtledove boils down to "Why should I read a clunky book/series that focuses entirely on hamfisted parallel events that I dislike not because they're implausible, but because they're uninteresting?"
 
Come to think of it, when Turtledove gets "big-picture", he reminds me of a weaker Larry Bond.
 
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