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Advance and Retreat | Rating | |
| C | |||
| Harry Turtledove | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| The War Between the Provinces | Sentry Peak, Marching Through Peachtree, Advance and Retreat | ||
General Hesmucet has set off to rampage rampage through Peachtree. Doubting George is left with the dregs, those troops Hesmucet chose to leave him. And he's up against an actual army, albeit a much-reduced one. And that army is led by General Bell, who refuses to admit defeat despite all his losses. The south is soundly winning the war; this is the last gasp of the northern seccession effort in the east. But by no means is it a given that George will prevail.
Except, of course, it pretty much is. This is based heavily on real life, the campaign of George Thomas against John Bell Hood in the American Civil War. As the author himself notes at the end, nearly every move in the book has a real parallel. So there's never any real doubt who will ultimatly win, here. Even for those not intimately familiar with the battles in the west side of the war, it's fairly obvious because of the previous books' ovious correspondence, and we all know who won that war. And if that wasn't enough, the story here is almost a line from Bell being a contender - an underdog, but a contender - to his army being irrelevant to the war's outcome even on a local level. In real life it might be a desperate struggle - any war, or part of a war, is. And it was would make a fascinating documentary of how going on the offense isn't always the wisest thing a general can do. But it hardly made for a good story, in which the outcome was in doubt.
Phrases from real life, from the real war, were also inserted into this book, more or less. That's fine, done carefully. It makes for a little wink at the reader, or helps emphasize the similarities of the story to the reality. So I was mostly able to shrug it off when it happened in the previous books. But those similarities didn't exactly need a whole lot of emphasizing, and I just had to cry foul. Two people might be able to come up with roughly the same phrase, sometimes, but not when the phrase is complex enough. It's akin to two people coming up with the exact same joke. Possible but unlikely, and certainly there would be some differences. The similarities were just a little too blatant, here. If the book was more of a satire, it might have worked, but its tone is quite serious and straightforward. The words just became to me a rip-off of reality.
Lastly, I had to ask myself after one scene why Bell's underlings failed to attack as he'd planned. The cases for the real event are debatable, thanks to conflicting stories and the twin fogs of time and war. But there is none of that here, since the book places readers right there, right then. This is definitely one parallel that needed breaking. Turtledove could, and should, have made the reason clear. There was no real excuse not to either press the attack or give a good reason why not.
Of course, the book is still interesting. It is an excellent accound of how a general can piss his command away through overagression. And, of course, it's an interesting retelling, with a slight twist, of the western battles of the Civil War, an arena little known except by enthusiasts. But it just wasn't enough. There were too many irritants for my to really like it much.
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