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Type: fiction
Status: liked
Author: S.M. Stirling
Tags: sf alternate_history
Description: I love alternate history, so this concept was right up my alley. And while I love the concept,I love alternate history, so this concept was right up my alley. And while I love the concept, and how it was thoughtfully developed, the author's writing style turned me off too much to let me recommend it highly, or even read the author's further work in alternate history. The author forgot the famous dictum of "show don't tell", and instead had his characters constantly expounding on the technical details of every piece of equipment, process or craft that they ran across. This made it hard to like the characters since they were constantly prattling on about how much they happened to know about rifles, armored vehicles, flying a plane, sailing a boat, modern tractor technology, harvesting practices, wine, wildlife, horse breeds, on and on and on and on. The author obviously did a lot of research, or happens (like the characters) to know an awful lot about just about everything. But rather than that research being subtly reflected in the nuances of the world he created, it was constantly shoved in your face, then pointed at repeatedly in case you hadn't noticed in the first place that they had chosen to modify the location of the grip on this particular model of submachine gun borrowed from the Israeli model. Ugh, too bad....
2008-08-05
