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    Worldwar: Tilting the Balance
    Worldwar: Tilting the Balance
    Worldwar: Tilting the Balance
    Audiobook25 hours

    Worldwar: Tilting the Balance

    Written by Harry Turtledove

    Narrated by Todd McLaren

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    No one could stop them-not Stalin, not Togo, not Churchill, not Roosevelt...

    The invaders had cut the United States virtually in half at the Mississippi, vaporized Washington, D.C., devastated much of Europe, and held large parts of the Soviet Union under their thumb.

    But humanity would not give up so easily. The new world allies were ruthless at finding their foe's weaknesses and exploiting them. Whether delivering supplies in tiny biplanes to partisans across the vast steppes of Russia, working furiously to understand the enemy's captured radar in England, or battling house to house on the streets of Chicago, humankind would never give up.

    Yet no one could say when the hellish inferno of death would stop being a war of conquest and turn into a war of survival-the very survival of the planet...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 20, 2010
    ISBN9781400183951
    Worldwar: Tilting the Balance
    Author

    Harry Turtledove

    Harry Turtledove is an American novelist of science fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy. Publishers Weekly has called him the “master of alternate history,” and he is best known for his work in that genre. Some of his most popular titles include The Guns of the South, the novels of the Worldwar series, and the books in the Great War trilogy. In addition to many other honors and nominations, Turtledove has received the Hugo Award, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and the Prometheus Award. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, earning a PhD in Byzantine history. Turtledove is married to mystery writer Laura Frankos, and together they have three daughters. The family lives in Southern California.

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    Reviews for Worldwar

    3.5/5

    256 ratings16 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I was looking for a new series to start and I had read reviews of the books in LT. The Martha Canfield Library had the first book of this series in the stacks so I check it out. I found the book to be well written and the premise of the story interesting. In many science fiction books only one or two characters are not two dimensional, this tale has many and I find this fascinating. Can't wait to read the nex book in the series.
    • 4/5
      I was hoping for more, but this book is the first book of Turtledove's that I read, and I enjoyed it. I wasn't sure how I would like an alternate history book, but add in an alien invasion during world war II and it was a very interesting read. A classic example is how would a less technical race (Human kind) fare in a battle against a more technologically advanced race that is bent on taking over their planet and subjugating them.
    • 3/5
      A pretty fun premise - WWII hangs in the balance, when from out of the skies comes a far superior enemy - the lizards! The lizards have more technology - tanks and helicopters that run on hydrogen, nuclear weapons, and radar - just at the point where mankind hasn't discovered any of these handy things. However, the reconaissance mission was done many years earlier, so they are expecting an enemy for whom the broadsword is still high tech, so have a rude awakening when the encounter people that have got airplanes, tanks and guns of their own. Also in mankind's favour is the fact that lizardkind's civilisation has been stable for thousands of years, and they are not used to adapting to rapidly changing circumstances in a way that humans are. So although humans have the inferior technology, their use of cunning tactics soon means they have, if not the upper hand, at least a fighting chance against these invaders from the skies. The story is told from multiple narrative viewpoints, ranging from a German tank commander, a female pilot from Russia, a Polish Jew trapped in the Warsaw ghetto, a Chinese peasant, and for some reason, several members of an American minor league baseball team that have widely diverging fates after their train is bombed by the lizards. One of the strengths of the book is that we also see things from the lizard's point of view - both common ground troops and the high command. They are not evil monsters, simply soldiers that have been sent to subjugate the Earth and bring it into their Empire. And they are not here to slaughter all the humans, just pacify them. Also, they don't seem to have invented torture, and treat captured enemy combatants with respect if not kindness, something they are not alway afforded from their human counterparts. On the downside, this is a LONG book, that jumps from each narrative point fairly regularly, breaking up the flow and momentum, making it a struggle at times. Also, what it doesn't say anywhere on the cover of the book, is that this is only the first of a series of four, so having slogged through the whole thing, I wasn't given any resolution, which was rather annoying. I'm not sure if I care enough the track down and read another three volumes, but taken on it's own, this was quite a fun, and at times unexpectedly thoughtful book.
    • 3/5
      Odd. Usually I really like Harry Turtledove's books, but this one didn't impress me so much. Rather than read the other three books in the series, I contented myself with reading the synopses on Wikipedia. Anyhoo, this is an alternate history/science fiction hybrid speculating on what would happen if aliens invaded Earth in the middle of World War II. Mr. Turtledove tells the tale from a variety of perspectives--a technique I fell in love with when I read the first book of his The Great War series. My biggest complaint is that this "global" perspective is actually limited to the northern hemisphere. Logically, there would be a lot of invasion activity in Africa and South America, but that all takes place behind the scenes.--J.
    • 4/5
      A doorstop-sized novel - the first of a series - wherein World War II is rudely interrupted by an alien invasion. Former enemies have to join forces to combat the greater foe. The history is fairly well done, though it's not entirely clear from the internal narrative exactly what year it is, and the passage of time tends to go a little by the board; about three-quarters of the way through the book, the Luftwaffe turns up with jet aircraft, which is a little bit of a surprise because we've been down and dirty with the action most of the time and haven't had time to relate the story back to "our" history. But this is a minor criticism.The human characters take a little time to get into their stride, but they are well enough drawn. Turtledove's historical background shows, and apart from a couple of minor slips (British characters referring to the season as 'Fall' instead of 'Autumn', and an RAF crewman with the surname Whyte who, for some unknowable reason, has not been nicknamed "Chalkie" by his colleagues) the technical and historical details are reasonably solid. Some of the major viewpoint characters have their preconceptions well and truly challenged; and one plot strand deals with the experience of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and their reaction to the aliens' attack on the Germans; the main Jewish character, a rabbi, only realises almost too late that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is only ever a temporary situation.The aliens are quite sympathetically written. They are reptilian, and come from a long-established race that has held control over their world for many tens of thousands of years. They have done this by careful forward planning and maintaining strict adherance to protocol and precedence; they have already conquered two other worlds and so consider themselves masters of the universe. Unfortunately for them, their only reconnaissance of Earth was carried out in medieval times, and the shock of finding out that some races progress far more rapidly than they expected is well put over, to the extent that the reader can easily find themselves having some sympathy with the invaders. By the end of this first novel, they have been fighting - and slowly losing - an asymmetrical war and beginning to reach the end of their resources as they never anticipated needing to actually fight to hold the world - and a colonisation fleet is only a few years behind...I found this novel far less of a slog than its length of some 650 pages suggested, though I do wonder how the story will be sustained over the next three volumes.
    • 3/5
      A fascinating scenario where aliens invade during World War II, leading to a fragile alliance between all the major combatants to resist the new common enemy. Although it does feature Russians, Germans, Japanese and British, I find it rather US-oriented. But still a great read.
    • 3/5
      Good second novel in the series. Fun to see how adaptable humans often foil the consistent aliens. Interesting to see how history could have been different in this alternate history series.
    • 3/5
      much better than the first one
    • 2/5
      I read through Turtledove's Southern Victory series during the 00s. The paperbacks ended with a preview of the World War series. I was always intrigued, but ended up never picking them up.Earlier this year I saw the first 4 books at a thrift store and decided to give them a try. The first book was good enough to peek my interest, but this second book is already reminding me of all the aspects of Southern Victory that I got burnt out on.Turtledove has a really bad tendency of repeating himself. Repeating descriptions every single time he switches the POV character. But that's not even the worst of it. The paperback is nearly 600 pages. The first 3 books of Southern Victory were about 300-400 and hit a really good sweet spot in length. The 600 pages wouldn't be an issue, except it feels like almost nothing happens for the whole book.The book also struggles with the whole idea of a "World War", as Turtledove is constantly shuffling around characters in order to have events happen around them. The only characters that feel like they stand on their own are all characters who stay in the same general area. Sam Yeager, a former American baseball player who is a liaison with lizard POWs on the American Nuclear project, Ludmila Gorbunova a female Russian pilot whose antiquated plane manages to annoy the Aliens, and Mutt Daniels, Sam Yeager's former coach, a WW1 vet and a front line fighter on the American front and Liu Han, a Chinese peasant who is abducted by the aliens and then put in a POW camp.Even with this going on, the book still struggles to tell a coherent story about the War. Which isn't all that surprising, while Turtledove's vision of a WW1 between the Union and Confederacy managed to be very immersive, the WW2 between both sides sputtered considerably. It was as though he had an overall image of the story he wanted to tell, but struggled to fill in the details in both cases. This despite the books ballooning in size.I might continue the series just to get through the WorldWar section of these books, but even then they are definitely getting put on the backburner after I struggled so hard to make my way through this book.
    • 3/5
      The second volume in the initial trilogy of the Worldwar Series does do more character development, and does a decent job of exploring the ramifications of the complexity of the world crisis at the time. So I am pleasantly pleased at the level of suspense pacing demonstrated by HT in this volume. Sadly, the book retains its European and North American focus, but one plays to one's strengths, I guess.
    • 3/5
      Interesting concept, showing how a common enemy, can unite the worse of allies
    • 4/5
      An excellent deeply engrossing book.
    • 3/5
      Turtledove's second instalment of his invasion saga continues to track the wartime heroics of a diverse set of characters spread across the globe. The narrative easily slips the reader back in to the action, with short chapters to re-introduce the myriad of characters. 'Tilting' is definitely a middle chapter, with plenty of character development and skirmishes that push the frontlines backwards or forwards. There are a few surprises in there, however, for the main 'Tilting' is laying foundations for the forthcoming material. Overall, it's too wordy, with too much redundant narrative. There's enough to keep you going; not enough to make this a notable book in the series.
    • 5/5
      The epic alternate WWII saga continues. All the different storylines have their points of interest, though the ones that interest me most are those set in the Soviet Union and those involving the Polish Jews who initally sided with the invading Lizards as they at least saved them from the Nazis.
    • 4/5
      Book 2 of the Turtledove's Worldwar series is an excellent follow-up to book 1, "In the Balance." At this stage (having read only the first two books of the series), it seems fair to say that Turtledove has conceived this series as one large story, splitting them into separate novels only for marketing purposes. If you're going to tackle this series, hit them in order.
    • 3/5
      The second in a series where aliens invade earth during World War II and the major combatants join together to resist them. Interesting to speculate how much earlier the atomic bomb could have been deployed if the big powers had cooperated.