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This deserves a longer review than I have the energy to write, just now. (And "Drive to the East" is the second of four books, not the most recent, in fact, in a series...) ... What it's about and is: Turtledove's recent writing has focused on alternate history. (Not "alternative history" after the model of A People's History of the United States, which I think very well of by the way, but history as it might have unfolded if a few things had gone differently at important moments; speculative fiction/history- something on that order.) "Settling Accounts" is the latest of several series, given the name "Timeline-191" by fans, which started with the stand-alone novel "How Few Remain" (in 1997) and has continued with a few trilogies since (and now, this series of four books). The Southern United States stayed independent, the Union fractured, after some minor but crucial battlefield mishaps went tailspin; How Few Remain recounts an equivalent of the wars of the 1880s (just as his next novels in the series recount the alliances of the Great War of the 1910s, its immediate aftermath (a "Versailles"-like peace imposed by the North and its allies - Germany, etc. on the South and its- Britain, France, ... - you did know that if it hadn't been for circumstances, Britain might have joined the South in the Civil War despite its opposition to slavery, such was its need for cotton, yes? Circumstances were- in the end- mostly that Britain did find another source of cotton :) ... )- and this series, of which "Drive to the East" is the second of four books, is something of a mirror of World War II - but with a charismatic and neurotic man rising to the top spot in the Confederacy, starting another war and while doing so (and for reasons of his own, though the propaganda he puts out -is- eerily like that one hears about from the Nazi era, yes...) - puts in a plan to rid of the black population, slowly than more quickly. (Well, the exact details he leaves to trusted others, and despite parallels military and otherwise this novel isn't a point-by-point mirror of World War II... though it is interesting when, as in many of his semi-historical novels, historical characters turn up in unexpected but true-to-well-researched-life roles. There are gripes to be made - and yes, this is the _brief_ review... - but I enjoyed this a whole lot... and will be looking for volumes 3 and 4 which are already out, just apparently not at my library, or not in. (Will have to check the catalog :) )
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