Could not finish. ( )

Nazi!!! On a unicorn!!!

I thought of titling this review "A Connecticut Nazi in King Arthur's Court" but the cover. The cover! One of the awesome, unintentionally(?) goofy book covers in the history of, well, books!

Nazi!!! On a unicorn!!! And yes, by the end of the book, our protagonist, Wehrmacht Captain Hasso Pemsel, does get to ride on the back of a unicorn.

It's also a pretty good read, though far from Turtledove's best. They can't all be masterpieces, and this tale of a wayward Wehrmacht officer magically transported to another dimension via the Omphalos stone while hunkered down in a Berlin museum besieged by enraged "Ivans" bent on revenge in the last days of WW2 (the Big One) is not a masterpiece. But it is fun.

Hasso Pemsel starts off his adventure in the new dimension by saving a buxom blonde goddess from her swarthy attackers, then immediately (and I mean IMMEDIATELY) bedding her. Or roading her. Like the Beatles song. They did it in the road. They do it a lot. Pemsel likes it a lot. His little soldier convinces his big soldier (the brain) to ally himself to the Aryan looking "Lenelli" but it's only a matter of time before he finds out that the swarthy, obviously sub-human Grenye, are much cooler (and sexy as well). About 50 pages in I was saying to myself, "when is he going to invent gunpowder?" and was not disappointed by the end of the book.

Please understand, this book is NOT a joke, though reading my description you might think so. Turtledove is attempting his usual "fish out of water in another dimension, or alternate time" trick to teach us that Nazis are people, too. And that appearances can be deceiving. And that beauty is only skin deep. And unicorns are cool. And other stuff.

In the movie version, Pemsel would be played by Pierce Brosnan.

Three stars for the book (all in all, an entertaining and not boring read). Ten stars for the cover!

Nazi!!! On a unicorn!!! ( )

After the Downfall, by Harry Turtledove feels somewhat familiar to an experienced reader of Turtledove's work. We have a fantasy world with unusual magic. We have a sympathetic Wehrmacht officer in the mold of Heinrich Jäger from the Worldwar series. We have some speculations on the nature of Gods (Goddesses actually) in a world where belief in them gives them power. We get medieval battle tactics. We get sex.

In this case, however, Turtledove decides to mix them together, add some interesting characters and see what comes out of such alchemy.

Hasso Pemsel is not having a good day. You wouldn't either if you were a German army officer in 1945, with the Russians knocking on the door of the Museum in Berlin you have been, improbably, been asked to guard.

Joking around with his soldiers, he sits on an Omphalos stone...and finds himself in a different world entirely. With his gun, he saves a blond bombshell from a group of pursuers armed with primitive weapons. His reward from the woman for saving her from her pursuers is somewhat unexpected, but it puts him foursquare on the side of her people, the Lenelli, in their own pursuit of lebensraum in a new land. Hasso learns the language, learns how special Velona really is (a sometime avatar of the Goddess of the Lenelli) and joins their struggle against their even more primitive neighbors in a world of medieval weapons and magic. Fortunately, while Hasso's ammo is limited, his knowledge and ability to help his new found friends is not.

Homage to L Sprague De Camp (a la Martin Padway or Harold Shea)? I think so. Wish fulfillment for Hasso? No. Unfortunately, for Hasso, he gets a dose of reality when he gets fully engaged in a war between the Lenelli and the Grenye...

As I said above, the novel does have elements seen in Turtledove's earlier work. It would be a mistake to say this was a paint by numbers affair, since he does explore sociological questions in a new way, and some of the mid-rank characters are interesting and well developed (in addition to Hasso, who has the most character growth of course). Turtledove lets us learn more about Hasso's new world in bits and pieces and we get a real sense of what's going on, and the readers sympathies can gradually and naturally change along with the protagonist's. Its not really a spoiler to suggest that the Lenelli-Grenye struggle is very much analogous to the German-Russian portion of the conflict of World War II. The historical allegory is strong, but not overpowering.

I wouldn't start here as a first Turtledove novel.It's not Turtledove's best novel, but fans of Turtledove (like me) who have read a decent spread of his work will certainly enjoy it. ( )