2005; 519 pages. Genre : Alternate History. Overall Rating : 5½*/10.
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This is the sequel to Days of Infamy (reviewed here), in which the Japanese followed up their surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor with a successful land invasion of Hawaii. End Of The Beginning begins in early 1943, with the Americans building up a massive force to try and retake Hawaii, and the Japanese working feverishly to construct impregnable defenses.
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What's To Like...
Turtledove uses his usual style here - telling the story via POV's of about a dozen individuals. There are a couple American soldiers, of course; but we also get to follow two POW's, a number of Japanese soldiers and brass, and representatives of the various ethnic groups that were on the islands at the time - Japanese, Whites, and native Hawaiians. Our surfer dude is back, as is the (Hawaiian) Japanese dad dealing with his two high school kids who think of themselves as Americans. And for you romantics, there's a love story between one of those sons and a teenage white girl.
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Turtledove has a nice feel for Japanese expansionism and Hawaiian nationalism. He also acquaints you with the horrors of living under WW2 Japanese occupation. If you're not familiar with things like the Bataan Death March, enforced conscription into "Comfort Houses", working POW's literally to death, and a flagrant disregard for the Geneva Convention (which, to be fair, Japan had never signed); this book will open your eyes.
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There are some weaknesses. Like the book/movie, The Longest Day, it takes forever for the action to get going. If you're going to read EOTB for the war strategy and killing, just skip the first 240 pages or so. The good news is, once the shooting starts, Turtledove is in his element, and the second half of the book scoots along just fine. And as is true in all wars, some of the good guys die; some of the bad guys survive.
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There is the author's usual penchant for repeating himself. You will be told umpteen times that mortar fire is scary because it can land right on top of you before you hear it; that a pilot should always obey the flagman when landing; that maltreated POW's keep getting skinnier and skinnier; and that American soldiers aren't as soft as the Japanese soldiers believed. Veteran Turtledove readers learn to accept this. You also have to accept cusswords, racial epithets, and graphic sex scenes.
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Kewl New Words...
None. Although Factotum showed up again. That word is stalking me.
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Excerpt...
Commander Minoru Genda walked past the front entrance to Iolani Palace. Fairy terns, almost whiter than white, floated through the blue, blue Hawaiian sky. The flag of the newly restored Kingdom of Hawaii fluttered on five flagpoles above the late-Victorian palace. Seeing that flag made Genda smile. The Hawaiians had gone out of their way to accommodate both Britain and the United States, with the Union Jack in the canton and red, white, and blue horizontal stripes filling the rest of the field.
Much good it did them, the Japanese officer thought. (opening paragraphs)
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Shigata ga nai... (see pg. 137)
EOTB is an easy read and kept my interest better than I'd feared. Turtledove gives you a well-reasoned answer to "what if the Japanese had conquered Hawaii in December 1941?" And maybe that's the drawback of the book - you can pretty much predict the USA's response and the ultimate outcome. Turtledove is also accurate about the brutality of the occupation. But if you've ever read about what the Philippines went through in WW2 under the Japanese heel, you can anticipate what happens here.
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This is not a stand-alone book, and I'm not sure who the target audience is. It's too crude for kids; and adult readers might be looking for a bit more depth. We'll give it 5½ stars, because Turtledove can spin a good, well-researched story and has a knack for asking cool, Alt-History "what if" questions. Just keep in mind that it's fiction, not literature.
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