Book Review: Worldwar: In the Balance

© 1994 by Harry Turtledove

Spring 1942. Total war rages across the globe as the US reels from the Japanese sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, Britain suffers nightly attacks from German bombers, the Warsaw ghetto toils under extreme Nazi oppression as mainland China toils under the barbaric imperial Japanese, and the Germans and Soviets lock horns over the vast plains of southeastern Russia.

Then, the aliens descend, armed and spoiling for a fight.

I found this longish paperback (565 pages) quite readable despite the fact that, for some reason, I could never get more than 20 or 25 pages done at a clip. I read it just about everywhere – bed, bath, bleachers during soccer practice, reclining chair in office during lunch, huddled over a slice at the local pizzeria – and I never lost interest, but the sheer weight of it kept me from motoring through it. Not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the novel really takes you into the 40s and Turtledove has a solid grasp on the cultures and personalities involved. But I’m getting a bit scattered. Let’s refocus.

Similar to my recent reading of Silverberg’s Tom O’Bedlam, the novel takes a form I like: characters scattered about who slowly come together. In Worldwar, there’s a “cast of thousands” appeal, a dozen protagonists who easily come to life under Turtledove’s pen. Americans, Brits, a pair of Nazis tank jockeys, a female Soviet flyer, a Swedish physicist, a Polish rabbi in Warsaw, Chinese peasants taken captive by the aliens. Oh, and the aliens, too, known as “The Race.” We’re privy to meetings and musings by the battle commander, various underlings, all the way down to alien fighter pilots and tank drivers. And then sprinkled in is a generous dose of historical character cameos: Patton, Fermi, Churchill, Molotov, Ribbentrop, General George Marshall, future General Leslie Grove of Manhattan Project fame, Hitler even, for two or three pages. So there’s really a lot packed into the book.

I liked that the action moved. I liked how humanity responded to the alien invasion with an uneasy truce, altering tactics and strategy, probing the aliens for weaknesses. I also liked how the Race realized it had come unprepared, expecting to fight a war with men in armor on horseback (due to a probe they sent 600 years ago and the human race advancing far quickly than theirs). There’s an interesting subplot where some aliens become addicted to a super-cocaine drug, known to us as ginger. And the underground drug trade that grows up around it. Also how the Race begins nuking us (Berlin first, Washington second) and how our scientists reverse engineer nuclear fission from the leftover byproducts at the devastation sites (plutonium?).

But, to be honest, there were strains of stuff I didn’t like, primarily focusing on the Race. I felt it odd that the aliens were basically matched with us, technology-wise, though their tanks and aircraft were probably two decades more advanced. And I thought taking all the secrets away from the Race and humanizing them was a mistake. Plus they were a tad bit monolithic: a society and culture that’s lasted hundreds of thousands of years without any revolutionary ideas or movements.

Bottom line: Worldwar: In the Balance kept me interested, but not enough to continue on to read the remaining three books in the series. Perhaps if I was a teen again I’d devour this. As is, I plan on giving his alternative history Roman legion stories a go should I come across them.

Grade: B+