Darkness Descending (World at War, Book 2) - Softcover

Turtledove, Harry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812575105 ISBN 13: 9780812575101

Publisher: Tor Fantasy, 2001

Synopsis

Now Turtledove returns to the story of a World War in a world where magic works, with this moving second volume. Algarvian soldiers corral Kaunians to send them west, towards Unkerlant, to work camps. The Kaunians left behind are worried about what the work camps might mean, but are assauged by Algarvian lies.

In Kuusamo, scholars race to find the relation between the laws of similarity and contagion. Rumors abound about the Algarvian work camps, rumors most cannot believe as true. But the mages know, for they can feel the loss of life in their very souls.

Turtledove's cast of characters takes on its own life as the reader sees the war from all sides and understands how the death and destruction benefits no one, not even the victors.

About this title

Review:

In recent years, Harry Turtledove has specialized in alternate-history novels in which World War II, say, is grimly complicated by the arrival of invading alien reptiloids; the fantasy sequence that started with Into the Darkness and continues with Darkness Descendingis a powerful demonstration that it is human malice, not military technology, that we have to fear. Broadly speaking, the sequence replays World War II with magical fantasy empires in place of the participants we know; there are analogies between the fiercely militarist kingdom of Algarve and the Third Reich, just as the dangerous paranoid who rules the rival empire of Unkerlant has much in common with Joseph Stalin. There is a Manhattan project making military use of the underlying rules of magic, a particularly vicious version of the Holocaust, and a large cast of vividly realized viewpoint characters--Unkerlant's principal general, an Algarvian dragon pilot, various confused civilians--caught in the wheels of history. Turtledove provides some worryingly thoughtful material here about power and its consequences; his bleak use of stock fantasy images in a developed military contex--screaming unicorns caught in firestorms--is coarse-grained but unforgettable. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

About the Author:

Harry Turtledove is the Hugo-winning author of many SF and fantasy novels. His alternate-history novels, include the bestselling The Guns of the South, How Few Remain, the Worldwar series, and the recent Ruled Britannia. He lives with his wife and daughters in Los Angeles.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Fantasy
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0812575105
• ISBN 13: 9780812575101
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 736