Product Description

It’s 1915, and the Great War is intensifying, and the time of darkness has come. The slaves of the south have risen against their masters, taken on the creed of Bolshevism and are attacking the Confederacy from within. But the United States remains pinned between their weakened southern rival, and their other bitter enemy, Canada. But both Presidents - Theodore Roosevelt of the Union and staunch Confederate Woodrow Wilson - are stubbornly determined to lead their nations to victory, at any cost.

Meanwhile the new and poisonous weapons of tanks, gas and planes are starting to make their presence felt at the front. It’s total war for the first time in human history and it’s ordinary people on both sides who are the ones to begin suffer...

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #416462 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 606 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Harry Turtledove marches on through history with The Great War: Walk in Hell. In his alternate timeline, the Confederate States of America won the Civil War, aided by Britain and France. In the 1880s (How Few Remain), Americans fought again after the CSA acquired parts of Mexico--and the CSA won again. When World War One begins with Archduke Ferdinand's assassination in 1914 (The Great War: American Front), the 34-state USA under Teddy Roosevelt allies with Imperial Germany and Austria against Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Canada and Woodrow Wilson's CSA. Trenches divide Canada, fierce fighting rages from Tennessee and Kentucky into Pennsylvania, a Mormon uprising against the USA consumes Utah, and a black socialist rebellion distracts the CSA, where slavery has ended but blacks still await full citizenship.

Walk in Hell takes us from autumn, 1915, through 1916. Soldiers, sailors and airmen continue the fight, but much happens behind the lines too. Turtledove's characters include Jewish immigrants who are socialist and antiwar, a widow running a coffee house in CSA-occupied Washington, DC, who passes information to the USA, and two Canadian farmers living under US occupation in Quebec and Manitoba. He vividly conveys the human side of war. When Joe Hammerschmitt gets a shoulder wound in the Virginia trenches:

...pain warred with exultation on his long, thin face. Exultation won. "Got me a hometowner, looks like," he said happily. Half the men up there with him made sympathetic noises; the other half looked frankly jealous. Hammerschmitt was going to be out of the firing line for weeks, maybe months, to come, and they still risked not just death but horrible mutilation every day.

Some find Turtledove's cast too large, the story's action too slow. Others complain that Walk in Hell is too similar to his Worldwar series. Alternate history buffs, however, will marvel at his mastery of detail, enjoy following his logic as he pursues military and social developments onward in time, and find it hard to wait for the next in the series. --Nona Vero

About the Author
Harry Turtledove has lived in Southern California all his life He has a Ph.D. in history from the University of California at Los Angeles and has taught at UCLA, California State Fullerton and California State University, Los Angeles. He has written many works of speculative fiction and fantasy. He is married to the novelist Laura Frankos and they have three daughters.

---

Customer Reviews

Very fascinating and very annoying
OK, I found this book both fascinating and annoying. Fascinating because I've always been interested in the great "What ifs" in History and they don't come much greater than the Great War. Annoying for a number of reasons I'll detail soon. Assuming you've read the first book but are yet to read this one I'll attempt to review this without spoiling the story.

The action goes on into late 1916 so we're through nearly half the war by the end of the volume. The storytelling is fascinating, showing the action develop largely from the viewpoint of those who are fighting the war. In keeping with both Turtledove's writing style and the nature of the War, a number of pivotal characters die in this volume and I'm expecting some more to go in the next two. Don't take anyone for granted here. Extra characters are introduced and there are a few cameo appearances from people who fought in the First World War but didn't become famous till WWII. The rebellions in both the USA and CSA are drawn to a close and here it is that I have my first problem. For the CSA deal with their rebellion entirely too sensibly for my tastes. In the USA the Mormons are dealt with the way you'd expect a nation to deal with a rebellion during wartime - viciously and stupidly, the same way we dealt with the Irish Rebellion in 1916. But the CSA seems to come over all sensible and this doesn't really make sense. Why are the CSA behaving better than all the other powers? This is the first problem I have.

The second is with the introduction of Tanks. Having seen Hollywood's latest rewriting of History where an American submarine crew do what the British actually did, having heard that the Americans are about to escape from Colditz in a new Hollywood film, something they never did 60 years ago (but, again, the British did), I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see the USA inventing Tanks. But I find it unforgivable. Tanks were a British invention, a very secret British invention and the idea that both the USA and Britain could simultaneously develop Tanks... well it's ridiculous. It would have been far better to have had the CSA deploy Tanks in America first, having got them from their British Ally.

That's the main reason I downgraded my review to 3 instead of 4. Also annoying, though acceptable, are the tantalising hints of what is happening in Europe. Italy stays neutral, the Irish Rebellion continues past Easter as the rebels are armed by the USA and the French lose Verdun. The last is the first major indication of how a Western front lacking the Canadians and some British would go different to how it went. On the other hand, the Blockade of Germany still continues and that was crucial in winning the war. Though I complain about this, I find it fascinating and really do want to see what will happen. I will by the next book.

Good installment in Turtledove's alternative history series
In "The Great War: Walk in Hell," Harry Turtledove continues his tale of an alternate world in which the United States and Confederate States fight the "war to end all wars." From the vantage point of the characters he introduced in The Great War: American Front (The Great War), the reader follows events from the fall of 1915 - with the sides deadlocked in a bloody stalemate and facing rebellions at home - to the end of 1916. Though some characters are better defined than others, the overall depictions are strong enough to sustain a reader's interest throughout the novel. Together their experiences convey the grinding misery of the conflict, with the deaths of a couple of his main characters effectively underlining the tragedy of war. As a result, while suffering from some of the drag inherent in any middle novel of a series that seeks to sustain action without reaching conclusion, "Walk in Hell" is an entertaining read and a good addition to his developing tetralogy.

USA vs Confederacy: Round 3, part 2
1915. The USA and Confederate States of America are finding out that wars in the early 20th Century are long and grinding businesses, as this second book in the "Great War" tetralogy unfolds. This book can't be read in isolation, you'll have to get the first one (Great War: American Front) to get any enjoyment from it. Very much the middle book in an engrossing series.