New Readings

Last night I finished off my second new book in 3 days. Friday night I stopped off at the Long Beach Barnes and Noble, and I bought The Grapple by Turttledove, continuing his alternate history of “What if the South won the Civil War?”, and Book 2 of the Axis of Time trilogy, Designated Targets.

All in all, I enjoyed Designated Targets much more. It plays off the idea of a US Naval battlegroup from 2021 being sent back in time to the Battle of Midway, where things go dreadfully wrong.

The best set of lines comes from The Grapple, where one character is challenged by Patton to a duel, and he responds by choosing flamethrowers at 10 paces. Just the idea of that alone got a good laugh out of me.

Still, it’s things like this that prove I’m worthless when new books come out. I’ll just blow through them until I finish, and I can’t seem to do much else besides read.

I could recommend either book to people, but the previous volumes would make the stories much easier to understand. Turttledove’s characters seem just as wooden as ever, filling out roles that our World War 2’s real life generals did. Fun to play with, but easy to step into predetermined paths.