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alexcirtal's review against another edition
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
knightofswords's review against another edition
4.0
As someone who has a soft spot for alternate history books, it is a bit disheartening to find out that the majority of the books written in the genre (especially by Americans) fall into two categories, namely:
1) "WHAT IF AMERICAN CIVIL WAR WAS DIFFERENT BECAUSE OF THING THAT HAPPENS AT GETTYSBURG/ANTIETAM/BULL RUN?" (almost always by authors who handwave away the horrors of Slavery)
2) "HITLER...VICTORIOUS?" which, far too often, feature authors claiming that Nazi Germany and occupied Europe would be super-advanced and prosperous with colonies on the Moon/Mars/Venus and not a carnival of horrors being overseen by incredibly stupid and dangerous fascists)
However, if you're going to read books in the genre that fall into those two (extremely broad) categories, well "Bring the Jubilee" is probably the best of the "WHAT IF CIVIL WAR DIFFERENT" genre - and it was probably the first of them all to it well - read this instead of whatever dreck Harry Turtledove grimly churns out each year. For what its worth, "Man in the High Castle" is probably the best of the second "genre".
1) "WHAT IF AMERICAN CIVIL WAR WAS DIFFERENT BECAUSE OF THING THAT HAPPENS AT GETTYSBURG/ANTIETAM/BULL RUN?" (almost always by authors who handwave away the horrors of Slavery)
2) "HITLER...VICTORIOUS?" which, far too often, feature authors claiming that Nazi Germany and occupied Europe would be super-advanced and prosperous with colonies on the Moon/Mars/Venus and not a carnival of horrors being overseen by incredibly stupid and dangerous fascists)
However, if you're going to read books in the genre that fall into those two (extremely broad) categories, well "Bring the Jubilee" is probably the best of the "WHAT IF CIVIL WAR DIFFERENT" genre - and it was probably the first of them all to it well - read this instead of whatever dreck Harry Turtledove grimly churns out each year. For what its worth, "Man in the High Castle" is probably the best of the second "genre".
jonathanpalfrey's review against another edition
3.0
This book is a work of American literature primarily devoted to the study of individual characters and their interaction; but it's also a work of science fiction set in a very different USA in which the Confederacy won the War of Southron Independence (as the people in that world call it).
There are many novels that emphasize character in the way that this one does, but science fiction is usually a form of literature that emphasizes ideas and story more than character. The risk in this novel is that it may fail to satisfy either readers of science fiction (who may be bored by the emphasis on character at the expense of story) or readers of more traditional literature (who may be alienated by the alternative world).
I'm primarily a reader of science fiction, so I find the story somewhat slow and not very eventful for most of its length. However, by compensation, the quality of writing is unusually high, and the characters have unpredictable minds of their own, like real people. The book is not hard to read, and it makes a powerful impression on me, because the alternative world and the various predicaments of the main protagonist (Hodgins Backmaker) are so vividly and capably described.
Although I'm impressed, I don't think I can give it an impressive rating. Firstly because I prefer novels to have a happy ending, which this one lacks; and secondly because I can't really believe in Moore's alternative world, however plausibly he brings it to life.
I can believe that a small change in history could enable the Confederacy to win the Battle of Gettysburg. What I cannot believe is that it would then win a military victory over the USA so complete that it would be able to demand and extract war reparations, at such a cost that the USA would be sunk in miserable ruin for the next century.
In the Civil War, as it's mostly called in our world, the USA had great advantages over the CSA in almost every way. The loss of one battle, or even a series of battles, wouldn't deprive it of those advantages or seriously damage its ability to continue the war. The CSA could hope that the USA would grow sick of war and agree to make peace (which I think came close to happening at times); but it couldn't hope to conquer the USA, and indeed never aspired to do so.
Thus, although this book is written in the form of science fiction, I can accept it only as fantasy: an imaginary world that never could have been. I think that's a better way to look at it, because one doesn't have to believe in fantasy.
I remain puzzled at Moore's motivation for creating this imaginary world, and writing about it with such care. Maybe he just thought it would make a good setting for the sort of characters he wanted to write about. It's certainly not a Confederate fantasy; it's told entirely from the US point of view, and Hodgins Backmaker is a patriot, despite the miserable state of his country.
There are many novels that emphasize character in the way that this one does, but science fiction is usually a form of literature that emphasizes ideas and story more than character. The risk in this novel is that it may fail to satisfy either readers of science fiction (who may be bored by the emphasis on character at the expense of story) or readers of more traditional literature (who may be alienated by the alternative world).
I'm primarily a reader of science fiction, so I find the story somewhat slow and not very eventful for most of its length. However, by compensation, the quality of writing is unusually high, and the characters have unpredictable minds of their own, like real people. The book is not hard to read, and it makes a powerful impression on me, because the alternative world and the various predicaments of the main protagonist (Hodgins Backmaker) are so vividly and capably described.
Although I'm impressed, I don't think I can give it an impressive rating. Firstly because I prefer novels to have a happy ending, which this one lacks; and secondly because I can't really believe in Moore's alternative world, however plausibly he brings it to life.
I can believe that a small change in history could enable the Confederacy to win the Battle of Gettysburg. What I cannot believe is that it would then win a military victory over the USA so complete that it would be able to demand and extract war reparations, at such a cost that the USA would be sunk in miserable ruin for the next century.
In the Civil War, as it's mostly called in our world, the USA had great advantages over the CSA in almost every way. The loss of one battle, or even a series of battles, wouldn't deprive it of those advantages or seriously damage its ability to continue the war. The CSA could hope that the USA would grow sick of war and agree to make peace (which I think came close to happening at times); but it couldn't hope to conquer the USA, and indeed never aspired to do so.
Thus, although this book is written in the form of science fiction, I can accept it only as fantasy: an imaginary world that never could have been. I think that's a better way to look at it, because one doesn't have to believe in fantasy.
I remain puzzled at Moore's motivation for creating this imaginary world, and writing about it with such care. Maybe he just thought it would make a good setting for the sort of characters he wanted to write about. It's certainly not a Confederate fantasy; it's told entirely from the US point of view, and Hodgins Backmaker is a patriot, despite the miserable state of his country.
maxjrosenthal's review against another edition
1.0
Incredibly unlike any alt-history I've read before, and not in a good way.
stephenmeansme's review against another edition
3.0
An alt-history bildungsroman set in an early 20th century where the Confederacy won the American Civil War. And the world sucks pretty hard! It's interesting that the narration opens with the hook that the narrator is "writing this in 1877, [but] I was born in 1921" but doesn't actually resolve this obvious time-travel bait until almost the end of the book. It's fitting in a way, given what we see of the narrator's character, but it also encapsulates the book's mildly frustrating pace.
It's rather unevenly scoped - I would have liked a more circumspect narration, where the alt-historicity is hinted at without a bunch of name-drops of famous people in unexpected destinies. They don't come out of nowhere, diagetically, but they do seem a bit gratuitous after a while. That, or I would have liked a grander scale, where events are narrated in full rather than written off or left hanging. That's a harder ask for a book that's less than 200 paperback pages.
Finally, the women characters are a bit under-written. Moore doesn't fall into the trap of having them all talk the same - in fact all the characters have fairly distinguishable voices - but rather they don't quite escape their roles as counterpoints to the narrator. Again, this is probably something that could have been avoided in a slightly longer book.
3.5 stars rounded down. Good thing the Union won!
It's rather unevenly scoped - I would have liked a more circumspect narration, where the alt-historicity is hinted at without a bunch of name-drops of famous people in unexpected destinies. They don't come out of nowhere, diagetically, but they do seem a bit gratuitous after a while. That, or I would have liked a grander scale, where events are narrated in full rather than written off or left hanging. That's a harder ask for a book that's less than 200 paperback pages.
Finally, the women characters are a bit under-written. Moore doesn't fall into the trap of having them all talk the same - in fact all the characters have fairly distinguishable voices - but rather they don't quite escape their roles as counterpoints to the narrator. Again, this is probably something that could have been avoided in a slightly longer book.
3.5 stars rounded down. Good thing the Union won!
lunaseassecondaccount's review against another edition
2.0
I enjoyed the premise- an alternate history where the world was more or less completely altered with the American Civil War where the south won. This one point is what got me interested in reading the book. I like alternate histories, and I thought this one would be quite good. Unfortunately, I found the first two thirds of the story to be unbelievably drab and it took me a while to really get through it. When the last third did come about, it went by so quickly that I felt as though I'd been done over. I couldn't believe that it was just over, and that was that.
I think I partly couldn't get into Moore's writing. I wanted to, and there was nothing wrong with the writing, I just didn't find it agreeable. There was also the character of Barbara. Good grief, I found her to be one of the most annoying characters I have ever read. Every page she was on was like nails on a chalkboard. I guess she was meant to have some kind of damaged, broken past, but she drove me up the wall. In a way, most of the characters in the book were like that- gratingly irritating with just a touch of nausea.
But hey, if this book floats your boat, good for you.
I think I partly couldn't get into Moore's writing. I wanted to, and there was nothing wrong with the writing, I just didn't find it agreeable. There was also the character of Barbara. Good grief, I found her to be one of the most annoying characters I have ever read. Every page she was on was like nails on a chalkboard. I guess she was meant to have some kind of damaged, broken past, but she drove me up the wall. In a way, most of the characters in the book were like that- gratingly irritating with just a touch of nausea.
But hey, if this book floats your boat, good for you.
skyring's review against another edition
4.0
I read this years ago, when I devoured the whole corpus of SF. I enjoyed it then, and when I picked it up again after decades on the shelf, I was surge I'd like it even more.
I now know a great deal more about America and I've been to Gettysburg. I'm not entirely sure that possessing Little Round Top would have swung the whole war, but it would certainly have changed the entire tone of the battle if Lee had secured it on the first day.
But we don't get there for a long while. Moore takes his time, setting the scene, filling in the history of the defeated North and giving us tantalising glimpses of affairs in the wider world. It's a hard life in what's left of the USA, and the penniless protagonist is lucky to find shelter and employment with an oddbod bookseller.
Drawn into shadowy affairs, things turn sticky, and has he really escaped to a better place when he falls in with some arcadian academics? There's sex and spice, history and conflict before the fateful trip into the past, to stand at a turning point in history.
I love time travel stories. Apart from the sense of anachronism - "Good morrow, milord, can'st inform me whereabouts of a batterymonger?" - there are all the delightful possibilities and paradoxes. What happens if you accidentally - or deliberately - kill your own ancestor? If you can change the past, will you also change the future, or is the universe self-repairing?
Moore sketches in the outlines of this puzzling world that is at once past and future. The 1930s as they never were. But might have been. And he gives us enough details to illustrate how odd it could have been. If the USA had not been a prosperous and inventive hub of industry during the latter Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, what technologies might have gone undiscovered? No Henry Ford to bring motoring to the masses.
No Wright Brothers to bring us flight. No Edison, no Bell to harness electricity.
I'm reminded of Stephen King's recent expedition into time travel, where we find out what ramifications JFK had on the world. A single point in time where history teeters. A man in a Dallas warehouse, another in a peach orchard. Ordinary people in ordinary places, and yet the world forks.
This is one of the classics of science fiction and time travel. It is - paradoxically - timeless.
I now know a great deal more about America and I've been to Gettysburg. I'm not entirely sure that possessing Little Round Top would have swung the whole war, but it would certainly have changed the entire tone of the battle if Lee had secured it on the first day.
But we don't get there for a long while. Moore takes his time, setting the scene, filling in the history of the defeated North and giving us tantalising glimpses of affairs in the wider world. It's a hard life in what's left of the USA, and the penniless protagonist is lucky to find shelter and employment with an oddbod bookseller.
Drawn into shadowy affairs, things turn sticky, and has he really escaped to a better place when he falls in with some arcadian academics? There's sex and spice, history and conflict before the fateful trip into the past, to stand at a turning point in history.
I love time travel stories. Apart from the sense of anachronism - "Good morrow, milord, can'st inform me whereabouts of a batterymonger?" - there are all the delightful possibilities and paradoxes. What happens if you accidentally - or deliberately - kill your own ancestor? If you can change the past, will you also change the future, or is the universe self-repairing?
Moore sketches in the outlines of this puzzling world that is at once past and future. The 1930s as they never were. But might have been. And he gives us enough details to illustrate how odd it could have been. If the USA had not been a prosperous and inventive hub of industry during the latter Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, what technologies might have gone undiscovered? No Henry Ford to bring motoring to the masses.
No Wright Brothers to bring us flight. No Edison, no Bell to harness electricity.
I'm reminded of Stephen King's recent expedition into time travel, where we find out what ramifications JFK had on the world. A single point in time where history teeters. A man in a Dallas warehouse, another in a peach orchard. Ordinary people in ordinary places, and yet the world forks.
This is one of the classics of science fiction and time travel. It is - paradoxically - timeless.
jeaninesmith1962's review against another edition
4.0
This book really caught my attention. It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone but with more detail. I look forward to an interesting book club discussion!
jarichan's review against another edition
3.0
Ein Klassiker des Genres der Alternativen Geschichte. Moore stellt die Frage, wie Amerika aussehen würde, wenn der Süden den Bürgerkrieg gewonnen hätte. Dabei zeichnet er ein für uns ungewohntes Bild eines armen und verlotterten Nordens. Die Stellung der Schwarzen ist eine andere. Die Menschen führen ein anderes Leben.
Die Handlung selbst jedoch fliesst eher zäh und trocken dahin. Erst gegen Ende nimmt sie ein wenig an Fahrt auf. Jedoch hätte ich mich noch mehr für die Gesellschaft und die wirtschaftlichen Zusammenhänge interessiert. Moore konzentriert sich aber eher auf seinen Helden und seine intelektuelle Entwicklung.
Somit ein interessantes Buch, aber nicht ganz das, wonach ich gesucht hatte.
Die Handlung selbst jedoch fliesst eher zäh und trocken dahin. Erst gegen Ende nimmt sie ein wenig an Fahrt auf. Jedoch hätte ich mich noch mehr für die Gesellschaft und die wirtschaftlichen Zusammenhänge interessiert. Moore konzentriert sich aber eher auf seinen Helden und seine intelektuelle Entwicklung.
Somit ein interessantes Buch, aber nicht ganz das, wonach ich gesucht hatte.