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Into the Darkness (Darkness 1)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Earthlight (2000-04-03)
ISBN: 0671022822
EAN: 9780671022822
Paperback: 607 pages
Edition: New Ed
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Editorial Reviews
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Alternative history SF is Harry Turtledove's speciality--he rewrote the US Civil War with added AK-47s in The Guns of the South (1992), and dropped alien invaders into World War Two in his "Worldwar" tetralogy (1994-6). Into the Darkness opens a fantasy sequence which more distantly echoes the multi-factioned complexity of WWII, as nation after nation plunges or is sucked into an escalating war. Energy sticks and magical "eggs" replace rifles and bombs; there are armoured columns of behemoths, dragon air forces, sea leviathans planting limpet-mine eggs. Names, geography and details are all new, but one nation excels in magical Blitzkrieg tactics and also persecutes the equivalent of the Jews ... foreshadowing worse horrors to come, since in this world human sacrifice is a potent source of magic and death camps could be highly practical. There's a Dunkirk-like flotilla of small boats, but it's used for attack rather than retreat. Theoretical sorcerers are on the edge of some fundamental breakthrough: an occult Manhattan Project looks likely to follow. Avoiding the genre's Good versus Evil simplicities, Turtledove's fantasy wars relentlessly reflect our real world's intractability and mess. Into the Darkness reads well once it's gathered momentum, but the excitements are tinged with considerable grimness. Sequels will follow. --David Langford
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Customer Reviews
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Episode I of a fantasy World War Two
Rating  (5)
Date: 2007-02-25
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
"Into the Darkness" is the first part of Harry Turtledove's six-volume reworking of the World War Two story set on a planet where technology is based on magic rather than machines.
Dragon riders replace aircraft, Behemoths replace tanks, East and West have been transposed, Eurasia has been moved to the Southern hemisphere so that Scandinavia becomes equatorial, and names and superficial national characteristics have all been changed. But this is real history, not alternative history. Again and again the terrible events of the book are based on real historical incidents.
Some of the changes to racial characteristics are impishly amusing, such as the fact that the people who correspond to the Finns live in an equatorial climate and look like Zulus, while the Saraha Desert becomes "the land of the Ice people," the Gyongyosian people who correspond to the Japanese are physically large, and the Kuusamans who correspond to Americans have epicanthic folds.
Other changes are rather more biting - the "Kaunians" who correspond to Jews are tall, blue-eyed, and blonde.
What Turtledove appears to be trying to do with this series is to study how different people responded to a time of great evil. Some people were sucked into taking part in that evil, some fought against it, others just tried to live through it. The changes to the names and characteristics of the participants seem to be intended to give the reader an opportunity to leave behind some of our emotional baggage about the holocaust so that we can try, not to justify the wrongs which people did in terrible times, but to understand how it could have happened.
All but two or three of the characters in the first few books books are fictional - Hitler is King Mezentio of Algarve, Stalin is King Swemmel of Unkerlant, and Marshal Rathar gradually morphs into Zhukov. This actually makes the story more exiting, as the characters are presented well enough that you care about them: we all know how World War II turned out but the readers has no such certainty about the fate of the fictional characters.
The six books of the series each corresponds very roughly indeed to about a year's real historical events. The first book, "Into the Darkness", mostly covers events corresponding to those between the start of the fighting when Hitler invaded Poland to the fall of France in 1940: the last few pages of the book are mostly filler taking the story up to set the scene for Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's attack on Russia in 1941, which is covered in the second book, "Darkness Descending."
The series is best read in the correct sequence. All the books of this series have the word "Darkness" in the title, but the publishers refer to it as the "Derlavi" series, this being the name given in the books for the great continent which corresponds to Eurasia. It is sometimes also described as the "World at War" sequence. The full set of six books in their correct order is:
"Into the Darkness"
"Darkness Descending"
"Through the Darkness"
"Rulers of the Darkness"
"Jaws of Darkness"
"Out of the Darkness".
Bottom line: the mood is as black as the titles indicate, but the series is a very exciting read.
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A definite read
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-01-08
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
The King of Algarve sets out to conquer the world. He will use any means to achieve this end. The other countries decide whether to fight with or against Algarve.
One people are chosen as scapegoats - the Kaunians. There are many stories to keep track of, so this is no bedside read at 1AM. The story is complex, yet simple. Keeping track of all of the characters can be confusing to begin with, but as the story moves along, it all gets easier. The story has many similarities to the history of WWII.
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Disappointing and too obvious
Rating  (3)
Date: 2001-07-13
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I have to say I didn't like this book. It's basically the Second World War fought in a fantasy setting with Algarve (Germany) overunning the Kaunian countries (France and the Low Countries) before invading Unkerlant (the USSR) The real world equivalents aren't too hard to spot, though I did think Kusuummo was Japan for a while (it's actually the USA) This isn't the problem I have, the idea of WWII fought out in a fantasy setting is quite good.What isn't so good is that all the equipment of WWII is also represented. So we have Behemoths (Tanks) mounting Sticks (Cannon) or Egg Throwers (High Explosive cannon) and Dragons (airplanes) doing the same. Each soldier has a magical "stick" that fires magical bursts of energy, in short they're armed with rifles. And it goes on - Kusuummo is working on unifying the magical laws of similarity and contagion, the Manhattan Project by another name. The net result is that it seems way too modern and not magical at all. The "feel" of the book suffers from this. It doesn't feel like a fantasy book at all. I was disappointed in this. I'll read the second one to see if it gets better.
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Nicely Constructed
Rating  (4)
Date: 2001-01-21
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is probably one of the best books I've read since Foundation, but could still be compared with Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising. Put simply, the book is about a war. Several countries fighting. Each country has a well-depicted culture, with many countries being made up of old empires. The old empire is described well, and gives a good impression that the history of this book has been given careful consideration.Part of what makes this book different from other "fantasy war" books is the depth of thought that has been put into the armies. Turtledove has taken modern-day equipment and devised suitable fantasy equivalents; for example, jet fighters with bombs are replaced by dragons and eggs. The style of the book is an interesting one. The plot focuses not on a group of individuals, but on several "Viewpoint Characters", and by combining them an image of the "big picture" can be constructed. This encourages you to feel for the characters, and at some stages I became quite upset! The characters themselves are varied, and each has a depth to them, missing from so many fantasy heroes. Another interesting point is the language. Mr Turtledove constructs his sentences very elegantly, and most of the dialogue is very formal. A lot of it, however, is quite the opposite; sexual detail is present, complete with bad language and everything you would expect in real life. This provides a refreshing contrast, and helps the reader to stay attentive. The main drawback (and the reason for the -1 star) is that is is hard work. Towards the start, I could only read about twenty pages at one sitting before having to stop, although it does get easier as the book goes on. Overall, this book has a rich tapestry of characters, countries and is well written. Four stars, and well worth a read.
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Typical Tutledove
Rating (4)
Date: 1999-06-06
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
No new directions for HT in this book. He manages, as usual, to present events both from the 'Grand Strategy' level of generals and rulers and that of the the peasant and 'poor bloody infantry'. If you like Turtledove, you'll like this.One minor curiosity; I read the softback, the back cover of which includes 'With echoes of the First World War...'. Loads of echoes certainly, so many that you end up playing spot the Character/Country/Event, but the echoes are of the Second World War. Just goes to prove that blurb writers and checkers don't actually read the book.
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Retail Price: £6.99
Amazon.com's Price:£0.01
That's 100% Off!
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