ospalh reviewed Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
Review of 'Guns of the South' on 'Goodreads'
So, no star rating as i didn’t finish it. The ★☆☆☆☆ maybe ★★☆☆☆ i want to give might be unfair.
So. Doing a »what if South African neo-nazis helpt the slaveholders of the CSA win the war« novel? Fine. Showing the slaveholders as the point-of-view characters, and the neo-nazis in as mostly positiv light? F⸺ no! Parts of it read like author just wanted to right the n-word and came up with this as an excuse.
I gave up after the pages and pages of murder, murder, murder of the battle of the wilderness. For that, too, there was no need to write that in so many details.
(OK, maybe my skipping over the rest made me miss some bits. Apparently the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging are used to show that the CSA were not quite as evil as they theoretically could have been, or something. Which, you know, makes them look …
So, no star rating as i didn’t finish it. The ★☆☆☆☆ maybe ★★☆☆☆ i want to give might be unfair.
So. Doing a »what if South African neo-nazis helpt the slaveholders of the CSA win the war« novel? Fine. Showing the slaveholders as the point-of-view characters, and the neo-nazis in as mostly positiv light? F⸺ no! Parts of it read like author just wanted to right the n-word and came up with this as an excuse.
I gave up after the pages and pages of murder, murder, murder of the battle of the wilderness. For that, too, there was no need to write that in so many details.
(OK, maybe my skipping over the rest made me miss some bits. Apparently the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging are used to show that the CSA were not quite as evil as they theoretically could have been, or something. Which, you know, makes them look sort-of good by comparison. Yeah, no. Don’t need to read that.)
The historical notes at the end are a joke. Who cares about the 47th South Georgia Platoon or whatever the name was. »Oh, but every name I sat down really fought in that unit«. Meh, don’t care. Just invent a unit and spent your time with more important stuff, like, finding a way to not show slave holders, and those directly profiting from slavery, as sympathetic.