Forum:Coup d'Etat

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I can't help feeling very disappointed by this year's installment. In TBS HT seemed willing to throw out the playbook and give us a radically different version of WWII. But rather than think through the ramifications of everything he'd introduced, HT seemed to set to work reversing everything before we'd had the chance to play with it. It almost reminds me of Philip Roth's Plot Against America. Yes, the "Let's get everything back to where it was before" resolution wasn't anywhere near so complete; but on the other hand, Turtledove's "The Master of Alternate History" while Roth was just dabbling.

My biggest complaint was the coup d'etat. To name THE ENTIRE BOOK after one particular event and then have that event occur offstage--even though we had a POV who was perfectly positioned to observe it!!--is unspeakably lame. The only step down from there would be if Willi or Theo or Hans-Ulrich suddenly said "Gee, sure is a shame that the Brits left weeks ago, isn't it?"

The build-up to the coup was not much better. All we really got was Walsh pitching the idea to Wavell (and I'm annoyed by the fact that I can't figure out how to pronounce his name). Wavell said no, then reconsidered for God knows what reason. And I'd like to know who else was involved on the military side. Neither HT's characterization of Wavell nor anything I've seen in the historical record suggests he had the force of personality to lead a military junta by himself. Some name-dropping was sorely needed, though I'll admit I probably wouldn't care if it weren't for this project.

The aftermath was more interesting, but we got to see so little of it. I didn't count but I don't think Walsh had any more scenes in the final two thirds of the book than he did in the first third. The unpopularity of the coup is far from what I expected, but there's a lot we can do with that. And the indefinitely delayed elections set an ominous tone promising a descent into military dictatorship. We needed to see far more of that. And we certainly needed it more than we needed Walsh to give us by-the-numbers combat scenes in Egypt. Send Rudel there, or just give us offstage updates.

Then I thought France's Big Switch Back could deliver the tension that Britain's lacked. The slow build-up showed some promise, but then all of a sudden you've got the green flares coming out of nowhere. Clearly there was some sort of secret agreement in place there, and neither Demange nor Harcourt would have been in position for it, but there still could have been something.

And of course, the thing about how the Nazis were going to behave themselves in order to keep France happy is a pretty gross mischaracterization of the one company-sized standoff.

The Pacific War was handled pretty well; McGill's scenes were interesting and informative, perhaps moreso than anyone else's. (Now there's something I never would have thought I'd say a couple of years ago!)  I hope he's not dead. If he is, and he's replaced by someone on another front, we've got no one giving us Pacific War updates. If he's replaced by Joe Orsatti or someone like that--What the hell's the point of that?

Other characters:

I'll miss Harcourt, he was a nice guy. And Demange seemed to have a lot more characterization through most of the book than he'd ever had before. In retrospect that may have been HT preparing him for promotion to POV. He's colorful and entertaining, which actually has me a little worried. I can think of quite a few examples of HT promoting colorful, entertaining characters to POV only to find that they prove far less interesting than they had before. And even if that doesn't happen, I'll still miss Harcourt.

I found I quite liked Weinberg this year. I think it's because HT's changed him somewhat. Now he's a freethinker. A few years ago he was a strict dogmatist. That's why he left such a bad taste in my mouth; we saw a number of characters struggling to maintain some intellectual independence under totalitarian rulers, and then here comes Weinberg having the opportunity for that independence and willingly ceding it to Stalin. But somewhere along the line HT more or less rebooted the character.

Jezek's okay, but his scenes were repetitive. I really don't give a shit if he kills Sanjurjo or not. HT still hasn't given us any sign that the Spanish situation is going to lead to anything worthwhile, and until he does, I just want to see less of it.

Lemp was boring as ever; now he's got a damned job to do, unlike last year, but we haven't actually seen him do it. All those scenes in the Barents and he never once found a troopship. I guess now that Hitler's declared unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic (Gee, where have we heard that before?) he'll have something better to do next year.

But none of that will change how despicable he was in Narvik. Saying he couldn't, or wouldn't, maintain discipline among his subordinates unless the base commander either forced a lot of prostitutes to come to Narvik against their will or forced a lot of local women to prostitute themselves--what the hell was that? I couldn't believe that HT actually set up that argument in such a way that we were supposed to side with Lemp. The Japanese did that--we saw Fujita take advantage in Myitkyina, which made me think how Lemp would have approved--but that doesn't mean it's something that should be emulated. Disgusting.

Speaking of Fujita, his adventures were mildly interesting. They seemed to be taking place in a vacuum, though. He could have been eliminated from the book altogether, and I don't think you'd need to rewrite one word of anyone else's scenes.

Peggy's doing what we figured she would, but in all the wrong places. I was hoping she'd go to the big cities and give us a bit of glamor. All those dreary little whistle stops in Pennsylvania, yawn. And I find it hard to believe that suave, worldly Constantine Jenkins got his start in Erie.

I couldn't care less about her marital woes, but I do appreciate that HT has a second plotline going with her. If all she ever did was give speeches, she'd grow extremely monotonous very quickly, especially in said dreary little whistle stops.

Sarah's domesticity continues to provide, at best, a nice respite from constant military POVs. Not unlike Ealstan and Vanai, except they were a bit more compelling.

But what's with the von Galen thing? Talk about not starting what you finish! (And of course, you were right, TR. Del Rey's cover copy writer was just talking out of his ass.)

Kuchkov was a bit more interesting than I'd expected him to be, but there's nothing really unique about him. HT's written guys like that more times than I care to count.

Anyone I didn't mention didn't do anything I gave a shit about. My earlier opinions on each of those characters remain unaltered.

Overall, not a bad book, but very disappointing. Our predictions were for the most part way off. Now I don't expect HT to write what we predict, but when what he writes is far less interesting than our predictions, it's very hard to get excited about the book.