Posted by: Panopticon
« on: February 05, 2020, 12:34:27 PM »I quite liked Worldwar and read it 3 times when I was a lot younger. I wonder if I would be able to read it again, now, without picking it apart.
My problem with Worldwar is that it's a Humanity, frakk Yeah! story (a somewhat common subgenre involving Humanity being inexplicably better than all the aliens) in a setting where I very much wanted the aliens to win, because the WWII human factions were almost universally horrible by modern standards. The aliens weren't noble liberators by any means, but it's hard to enjoy a story about ####s kicking the asses of aliens who came down and liberated concentration camps.
It is unfortunate that so many alternate history writers use their stories as a platform to make the ####s not look so bad. I think in this particular instance though Turtledove resisted that inclination and for all its faults that wasn't one, I do recall a bit of whitewashing regarding Russia though. And all the allies of course.