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A review by teachinsci
After the Downfall by Harry Turtledove
3.0
This should be a 3.5 rather than 3 stars.
After the Downfall starts during the final downfall of the third reich with a captain in the German army fighting the Russian army rolling into Berlin. This German, Hasso, is magically transported to another world and into another building war - one at a much lower tech level, but with magic. Just as in the world Hasso comes from, there is sex with beautiful women, racism against those who aren't the "Aryan Ideal," and soldiers who bond over fighting technique (apparently). From here, the war in the story is obviously (and stated) as comparing to the German invasion of Russia, the Americans fighting in Indians, and the English fighting the Aborigines with the difference being Hasso's ideas from another dimension.
While the premise of the story was interesting, but I feel like it failed to live up to that promise. There were vocabulary lessons (necessary when you learn multiple new languages), but who spends so much time thinking about exactly what tense (present perfect, predictive) they are thinking in by name? There were comparisons to the various invasions... over and over. And there was the necessary coming to grips with the similarities between the German's WWII activities and the behavior of the groups in this new world - leading Hasso to question his own racist tendencies.
Harry Turtledove is a well-loved writer of alternative history, I think that this foray into medieval warfare with modern twists would have been better handled as a story set as alt history, but it did give them a chance to put a Nazi riding a Unicorn on the cover.
After the Downfall starts during the final downfall of the third reich with a captain in the German army fighting the Russian army rolling into Berlin. This German, Hasso, is magically transported to another world and into another building war - one at a much lower tech level, but with magic. Just as in the world Hasso comes from, there is sex with beautiful women, racism against those who aren't the "Aryan Ideal," and soldiers who bond over fighting technique (apparently). From here, the war in the story is obviously (and stated) as comparing to the German invasion of Russia, the Americans fighting in Indians, and the English fighting the Aborigines with the difference being Hasso's ideas from another dimension.
While the premise of the story was interesting, but I feel like it failed to live up to that promise. There were vocabulary lessons (necessary when you learn multiple new languages), but who spends so much time thinking about exactly what tense (present perfect, predictive) they are thinking in by name? There were comparisons to the various invasions... over and over. And there was the necessary coming to grips with the similarities between the German's WWII activities and the behavior of the groups in this new world - leading Hasso to question his own racist tendencies.
Harry Turtledove is a well-loved writer of alternative history, I think that this foray into medieval warfare with modern twists would have been better handled as a story set as alt history, but it did give them a chance to put a Nazi riding a Unicorn on the cover.