The Coldest war

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"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

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An intriguing premise, well executed. submitted by Jen Chapin-Smith on August 17, 2012, 2:10am This is the second book in the Bitter Seeds series. In the previous book, a Nazi research program developed battery-powered psionic warriors, giving Germany a crucial advantage in the war. The powers that the tormented young research subjects developed included firestarting, flight, telekinesis, and, most usefully, the ability to see the future. The British were only able to defeat the Axis by resorting to a Faustian bargain with dark beings whose ultimate goal is to destroy humanity. An unnatural winter froze the Nazi war machine and civilians alike, allowing the USSR to win the war for Europe. So, it was warlocks versus ubermenschen, and the warlocks barely scraped out a Pyrrhic victory. Two conflicting views of war-- war as tantamount to human sacrifice, and war as the glorious expression of human will-- create a deliberate tension in the metaphorical aspects of the story.

"The Coldest War" starts some twenty years later. The USSR has built upon the Nazis' program to create their own force of superhumans. Virtually all of Europe is behind Stalin's Iron Curtain. Klaus and his sister, Gretel, were two of the children in the German research program, and they have been prisoners/research subjects in the USSR since the end of the war. Gretel can see the future. As the book opens, she engineers their escape and defection to the UK. This sets into motion a chain of events that reactivates Pip and Will, British agents haunted by what they did in the war.

Gretel seems to have an evil plan. Everybody else, including her own brother, are mere instruments in her possibly insane quest for unknown ends. Twenty years ago, she killed Pip's infant daughter for reasons known only to herself. Does she want to annihilate the human race? Does she want to bring about a Nazi victory? Does she want to rule the world herself?

As the threat from the Soviet psions grows, the British government makes more and more desperate deals with the dark side. Will they go too far? And is that what Gretel wants?

This book could have been soulless and cartoonish. Instead, it has interesting, conflicted characters. Pip and Will's deep unhappiness and marital struggles are achingly real, a nice contrast to the eminently unreal magic/scifi action. The foreshadowing can be a bit heavyhanded; I already knew how this book would end before I even finished the previous one. But it's still a fun read even if you guess where it's going. I'll definitely read the final book when it comes out.

Just...wow. submitted by eknapp on September 14, 2012, 5:37pm Book 2 of the Milkweed Triptych, and holy hot damn, what a follow-up. Twenty-odd years have passed since the (alternate) end of WWII. Marsh endures the tortured wreck of a marriage, Will has a wonderful wife who dragged him back from the brink of self-destruction, and Klaus has spent two decades as a prisoner/consultant of the Soviet empire. And Gretel continues to spin her sadistic and impenetrable web around all three of them.

The middle book of the trilogy reads like a spy-adventure novel. Marsh and Will are drafted back into Her Majesty's service and match wits against the KGB and their new Arzamas shock troops, vastly improved versions of Klaus and his peers in the REGP. The British now have monstrous child warlocks, fluent in Enochian in a way that the Bitter Seeds warlocks could never hope to achieve. It's kind of like the transition from Alien to Aliens: there are more good guys and more bad guys, and EVERYONE has more firepower than they did in the previous installment.

You can tell that Tregillis is a friend (protégé?) of George R R Martin; he's cheerfully willing and able to wreck the lives of his protagonists. He’s a LOT more focused than Martin, though; the story keeps surging forward but he always maintain deft control of the threads of the plot. And that’s in spite of the precog character trying to gum things up. I was duly impressed.

Tregillis keeps dropping tantalizing bits of alternate history into the narrative. I desperately wanted him to explore those further but the author was having none of it.

Tregillis: The collectivist French wines suck compared to South American wines.
Me: Ah, so the Iron Curtain stretches all the way to the English Channel now. Cool. Let’s talk about that some more.
Tregillis: No. And the American Depression is now in its fourth decade.
Me: Ooh! That! Tell me about that! So you’re saying that despite recent assertions to the contrary, it WAS the war that pulled the Americans out of the Depression? Or was it dropping the bomb? And what else have they tried?
Tregillis: Dunno. The Soviets have a functioning space station in 1963.
Me: Wow, let’s—
Tregillis: No.
Me: GAH!

It’s frustrating but it does help the book maintain its breakneck pace.