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Final Impact | Rating | |
| B | |||
| John Birmingham | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| The Axis of Time Trilogy | Weapons of Choice, Designated Targets, Final Impact | ||
It's 1944 now, and World War Two is wrapping up. Germany is on the ropes, even with some of the technology they gained from the Transition, the accidental time travel of a fleet of twenty-first century warships. But this isn't just about defeating Germany anymore. It is becoming more and more apparent that how this war ends will determine how the next century plays out - if not longer. For Stalin, too, knows what was the ultimate fate of the Soviet Union, and he is determined not to let it happen again. The new version of the Cold War is going to be a very, very different affair than that in the Multinational Force's history books.
Birmingham continues to write an imaginative yet believable story about what might happen when old meets new. The two cultures have mostly gotten used to each other by now, and a new status quo has been set. it's a very changed war, as a result. But there's a large gap of time between the books, and a lot has happened that we never get to actually see. At the end of the last book, Hawaii has been invaded by the Japanese; by the time this one begins, it is back in American hands. And there are similar developments all over, in personal matters as well as military. It would have been nice to see all that! It would have made the series much longer, but with writing like this I would hardly have minded.
Due to the large gap in time and events between the two books, I heartily recommend reading this soon after Designated Targets. Perhaps even directly afterwards. The gap will still be there, of course, but it will minimize the effects and let readers get their feet under them more quickly. It is pretty crucial that they have read the previous two books at some point, though; this is not a series that you can read out of order.
This is also a much less uncertain book than the others. In the first two books, the influx of advanced technology went mostly to the Americans, but plenty went to the Soviets, the Nazis, and the Japanese. The knowledge of how the war was "supposed" to go threatened to change the conflict as much as the new technology, and the Axis were able to put the Allies on the ropes in several ways. But Final Impact begins, right in chapter one, with D-Day, which is pretty much the beginning of the end for Germany. It is obvious the Axis will lose; the only question is how hard they'll hurt the Allies as they go down. The question of how the world political situation will resolve, setting up the new Cold War, only becomes an issue in the last third or so of the book, and even then it isn't the whole story being told.
All that aside, this is still a great story, a plausible working out of an impossible, "What if?" tale. Birmingham keeps the tension high with lots of gunfights, troop movements, strategy sessions, and so on. Unlike the first books, he doesn't do as much with his characters' personal lives as much, focusing almost exclusively on military matters. This is a story about the war first, the next war second, and the people fighting it third, something I found somewhat disappointing.
There may be yet more books set in this world written; just because this is listed as a trilogy doesn't mean a second set of related books on the way, eventually. There is certainly room enough for them, to add detail to the new Cold War and perhaps a sense of closure. Then again, this is history, if an alternate one, to which there is no such thing as an end. If there are more coming, well and good. if not, then this is still a great series that I enjoyed immensely.
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