Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar, #3) by Harry Turtledove


Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar, #3)
Title : Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar, #3)
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0345420586
ISBN-10 : 9780345420589
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 481
Publication : First published January 1, 1996

Communist China, Japan, Nazi Germany, the United States: they began World War II as mortal enemies. But suddenly their only hope for survival--never mind victory--was to unite to stop a mighty foe--one whose frightening technology appeared invincible.
Far worse beings than the Nazis were loose. From Warsaw to Moscow to China's enemy-occupied Forbidden City, the nations of the world had been forced into an uneasy alliance since humanity began its struggle against overwhelming odds. In Britain and Germany, where the banshee wail of hostile jets screamed across the land, caches of once-forbidden weapons were unearthed, and unthinkable tactics were employed against the enemy. Brilliantly innovative military strategists confronted challenges unprecedented in the history of warfare.
Even as lack of fuel forced people back to horse and carriage, physicists worked feverishly to create the first atomic bombs--with horrifying results. City after city joined the radioactive pyre as the planet erupted in fiery ruins. Yet the crisis continued--on land, sea, and in the air--as humanity writhed in global combat. The tactics of daredevil guerrillas everywhere became increasingly ingenious against a superior foe whose desperate retaliation would grow ever more fearsome.
No one had ever put the United States, or the world, in such deadly danger. But if the carnage and annihilation ever stopped, would there be any pieces to pick up?


Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar, #3) Reviews


  • Tomislav

    First read – 9 June 2008 - **. This is another bridge book, like
    Tilting the Balance, doing little to advance the overall story arc of the series - until the last two or three chapters. At that point, the geopolitical balance is finally "upset" by advancing human technology in comparison to the stagnant lizard capabilities, and several of the characters finally take some life-changing actions. But up till then, the progress is very slow with too-frequent recitation of repeated background material. I hope the end of the sequence turns out to be worth it.

    1 Worldwar; In The Balance (1994)
    2 Worldwar; Tilting the Balance (1995)
    3 Worldwar; Upsetting the Balance (1996)
    4 Worldwar; Striking the Balance (1996)
    5 Colonization: Second Contact (1999)
    6 Colonization: Down to Earth (2000)
    7 Colonization: Aftershocks (2001)
    8 Homeward Bound (2004)

  • Johnny

    When it comes to critiquing Harry Turtledove’s ability in crafting alternate history, I must echo the old SNL skit characters of “Wayne’s World” in saying, “I’m not worthy!” Those who follow my reviews know that I don’t care for the hopscotch nature of “epic” novels but that I am willing to slog through them (in doses) for the sake of George R. R. Martin’s gritty vision of medieval fantasy and the series from Turtledove in which WorldWar: Upsetting the Balance is the third volume. Even though I’m committed to completing the series, it takes me a while to get into each new volume because there is no one particular character with whom I’m emotionally engaged.
    That being said, I liked WorldWar: Upsetting the Balance for its differences with the second volume, WorldWar: Tilting the Balance. The latter was action-packed and as full of romance and comedic surprises as an Asian drama (a secret addiction of mine). This one is primarily about betrayal. The characters who are tempted toward betrayal are telegraphed, but the results were not what I had expected. One ended up exactly the opposite of what I expected and the other completely confirmed my fears for said character. The point is that Turtledove continues to fascinate me. I wasn’t expecting the war between the world’s coalition of forces and the alien invaders to escalate in quite the way, technologically and politically, it did. Nor was I exactly ready for the amazing events that took place in a portion of the alien camp. There is no doubt that I’ll be ready for WorldWar: Striking the Balance very soon.

    Meanwhile, there is plenty to like in this volume. I like the ethical dilemmas. At one point, Colonel Hans Jaegar [spelled with the umlaut instead of the “ae” in the book] objects to the manner in which human lives are being subjected to radiation in order to recover enough enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb. His superior responds: “If we do not recover the nuclear material, Colonel Jaegar, we are all the more likely to lose the war against the Lizards; at which point all ethical arguments become irrelevant.” (p. 93) Jaegar has to decide if he will obey the order and follow through, in spite of the human cost. Much later in the book, we read: “’Ja,’ Jaegar said in a hollow voice. What Skorzeny didn’t get and wouldn’t get if he lived to be a hundred—not likely, considering how the SS man lived—was that what we were supposed to do and what our superiors ordered us to do weren’t necessarily one and the same thing.” (p. 359)

    At times, I was simply intrigued by interesting takes on political and ethical debates. At one point, the Lizards reflect on the emotional and/or irrational aspects of human argument: “Molotov had made the same demand, although he’d couched it in terms of—what had he called it?—the ineluctable historical dialectic, a notion that gave analysts even more trouble than did the mysterious and quite possibly unreal thing called freedom. The Big Uglies had a gift for dreaming up concepts unsupported by evidence.” (p. 161) At another point, the Soviet pilot, Ludmila, “…supposed he thought initiative was a good thing. Like a lot of Soviet citizens, she mistrusted the concept. How could social equality survive if some people pushed themselves ahead of the rest?” (p. 432)

    I further enjoyed a discussion at one point that vividly illustrated the differences between “scientists” and “engineers.” In this exchange, Szilard tells Groves (the military officer and administrator of the Manhattan Project), “Adequate theory would allow the first attempt to be of proper quality.” To which Groves smiles and Turtledove editorializes: “That was just the difference between a scientist, who thought that adequate theory could adequately explain the world, and an engineer, who was sure you had to get in there and tinker with things before they would go the right way. “ (p. 125)

    Perhaps, the best writing was to be found in two places. In the first, a character was visiting another character who was immersed in grief.
    As he entered her rooming house, “The rooming house smelled of unwashed bodies, garbage, and stale piss. If you bottled the odor, you’d call it something like Essence of Despair.” (pp. 291-2) In another, a character reflects on the nature of war. “’You know what?’ he said, almost plaintively, to Muldoon. ‘You get stuck in a war, you don’t just set your body on the line. Everything you knew or thought you knew goes up into the front lines with you, and some of it ends up dead even if you don’t.” (p. 469) Wow! Those two lines alone were worth the time I invested in reading this book.

  • Joe Jackson

    This just felt like such wasted potential. Turtledove was building up such an interesting premise, an incredible alternate history involving an alien invasion, and then by Book 3... it's turned into The A-Team, World War II Edition. Between overabundant use of Idiot Plot and the protagonists getting lucky over and over, it went from fascinating to unbelievable in short order. Even when the lizards manage to accomplish their objectives, it somehow always ends up helping the protagonists in some unforeseen lucky way.

    While examples abound, I'll go with a simple one: you have an air base defended by a single anti-aircraft gun being attacked by about a hundred lizard soldiers and two attack helicopters. Despite the helicopters bombarding the anti-aircraft gun with missiles that have been described through 2+ books as "rarely ever missing thanks to the lizards' superior technology," the British soldiers being "so stubborn, so determined" keeps their gun from getting destroyed and they win.

    In an alternate universe, maybe the Brits could've been rescued by unicorns that then stampeded over the lizards, winning the war. Not much less believable.

    I literally threw this book across the room at about the 55% mark because the lucky breaks being presented weren't just unbelievable, but insulting to me as a reader. Needless to say, it was DNF'd. YMMV.

  • Lisabet Sarai

    The third installment in the Turtledove's saga of World War II derailed by an alien invasion is just as good as the previous two. There are lots of twists as the author follows his many characters through the war's highs and lows.

    My favorite aspect of this series is the detailed and insightful view the author provides into the thoughts and emotions of the invading "Lizards". They are just as "human" in their own way as the Earth's inhabitants. Indeed, they are often more compassionate.

    Recommended, though you need patience to stick with this story. I already have a copy of the fourth and last book. I'm very curious how it will turn out.

  • Bryan Alexander

    This is another installment in an alternate history series, which I'm reading because my 15-year-old son ordered me to. Worldwar offers the intriguing idea of an alien invasion which occurs smack in the middle of WWII.

    Upsetting the Balance is the third and weakest volume.

    In terms of plot, it traces the war through another year as multiple human nations struggle against the invaders, the Race or, as we call 'em, the Lizards. Most of the world has fallen to the aliens, but the leading WWII powers are still fighting hard: the US, the UK, the Nazis, the USSR, Japan, and China. Honestly, this becomes very repetitive and stale through the course of Upsetting, as multiple scenes rehash the same points for each side. We don't see much development until the end, whereupon .

    One nice scene has a psychologist (!) thinking about timelines. He makes a convincing case that the gap between the Lizards' observation of humanity (1400s, I think) and WWII would not have been a problem had the gap occurred earlier in history. For example, if the Lizards had spotted the Roman Republic, they would have had no problem walking over the late middle ages. A nice point, reminding me of Ian Morris' excellent Why the West Rules (for Now).

    Other problems with the book: the Lizards simply suck. Every chapter sees them acting stupidly, outfoxed by clever humans. It's repetitive, unrealistic, and saps the story of much energy.

    Another problem: the sheer death toll doesn't seem to affect humans very much. We are more upset by lack of electricity than mass slaughter.
    Related to this: nuclear fallout doesn't seem to be an issue. Which is, ah, weird.

    Bonus problem: apparently the southern half of the world lies under Lizard control. This doesn't seem to matter. The aliens don't get any joy from it, and the other humans don't seem to care. I'd love to see a storyline from the perspective of, say, an Australian aborigine, or a Chilean peasant. While I appreciate Turtledove's inclusion of fronts usually downplayed in WWII discussions (China, even Russia), this feels racist at worst, and awkward at best.

    Extra-bonus problem: the US paperback shows a meeting between Einstein, Eisenhower, and Mussolini. Which actually happens in the book, but makes no sense. It's never explained, nor do any characters return to it later. Why is the Italian dictator in middle America...?

    I'll look into volume 4, since my son will be unrelenting, but my expectations are low.

  • Sandra

    WARNING: SPOILERS!

    Harry Turtledove is a very good writer, but I'm getting tired of this series. It's just too long. Turtledove killed off an annoying character and it was a relief not because I cared so much one way or the other, but that the character was annoying and had been annoying and it seemed like there wasn't much Turtledove could have done with him to salvage the plot line.

    By the end of this book, so many cities have been nuked out of existence that it's just becoming depressing. I can't help but think it's an anti-war (or at least anti-nuclear proliferation) manifesto as well as whatever else it is. As good as Turtledove is -- very good, I think, at mining human thoughts and behaviors and motivations, as well as creating the same for the foreign creatures, good at using historical detail, good at convincing portraying Russians, Germans, Poles, Chinese, among others, good (as I've said in a previous review of one of the books) at making battles feel real but not so detailed that I just couldn't figure out what was going on any more, good at the writer's craft in many ways -- I just want it to be done.

    I now realize (belatedly) that perhaps a better strategy than reading books 2, 3, and 4 to find out how things resolve, I could have read 1 and 4, and tried to pick up the threads without reading 2 and 3. Too late now, so I will undoubtedly read the last of the series. Or maybe just skim it. Hmmm. There's a thought.

    Verdict: He's a good enough writer with a good enough premise that I want to find out "what happens," but the series is too long, by quite a long shot. The publisher may be responsible for that. Or, possibly, readers of this genre are fond of the multi-multi-multi-volume format. (There's another one that's worse: Stirling's Dies the Fire series, which I discovered years ago and shared with family, but became uninterested after the third book, and there are zillions now.) I prefer to use my energy and interest reading spiritual books, but since I enjoy some fiction I should remember not to pick up books that are part of a series. Because if they are anything like this series, there really isn't any resolution until you've read all the books. That's the worst thing about this series: each book is most definitely not a stand-alone. If you give up before the fourth volume, it's the equivalent of stopping in the middle of one long book.

  • Dan

    I find myself liking the lizard people better than most of the human characters. This makes me think I might be doing this wrong.

  • Chip

    Continuation of this epic story. As the humans are able to develop techniques to hold their own against a superior alien race, the battles get more intense. Turtledove has done a great job with the characters - all have great depth and you feel their struggles during the long and devastating war. My only complaint is all the countries are independently fighting the aliens and there is very little coordination between the groups. I look forward to the conclusion to this series.

  • Tex-49

    Avanti tutta con questa terza parte dell'Invasione: la storia non perde di mordente!

  • Alex

    VOTO INTERO CICLO DELL'INVASIONE: 4
    Il Ciclo dell'Invasione è composto da 4 volumi basati sul racconto di un'improvvisa invasione aliena che avviene nel pieno dello svolgimento della seconda guerra mondiale: da qui si dipana la narrazione di una vera e propria storia alternativa che vede le nazioni in guerra far fronte comune per cercare di colmare la schiacciante superiorità tecnologica e bellica dell'alieno invasore, al fine di contenerne le mire espansionistiche.
    Nel complesso è un buon ciclo, ricchissimo di vicende e personaggi appartenenti alle più disparate fazioni coinvolte nel conflitto mondiale, dei quali se ne seguono le azioni e i destini, più o meno coinvolgenti per il lettore, anche se ritengo che il punto di forza della saga si basi sulle caratteristiche sociali e sui profili psicologici degli invasori alieni, il che non mancherà di suscitare anche momenti di ilarità.
    Le pecche più evidenti si riscontrano nella talvolta superflua prolissità dell'autore nel descrivere i dettagli di ciò che racconta e sulle ripetizioni di vicende ed avvenimenti che non mancheranno di annoiare, soprattutto se il ciclo viene letto un libro dopo l'altro.
    Nel complesso consigliato agli amanti del genere ucronico.

  • Alex Lee

    Although this book starts off slowly, as in the middle of a conflict that has no clear direction. About halfway through we reach a point at which the aliens's internal hierarchal consistency starts to deteriorate. At this point the human contamination reaches full excess. What is interesting is that while the humans start off split, there starts to be a hint that a consistency for humans will emerge, although there is no equivalent contamination of the Lizards into the human lifeworld, beyond further war.

    I thought the end of this book particularly interesting as Turtledove takes what is a desperate situation and turns up the conflict even more. By the end of this book, the wandering directionlessness of the conflict from the previous books starts to take a definite shape as characters you think are central are killed off, and other characters who seem marginal take a more central role in defining the nature of the conflict.

  • Ahmed

    And so, I "read" through this "novel" in a couple of hours yesterday.

    Well, technically, it is not reading, because I skipped nearly all of the filler PoVs along the way, ending up with only about thirty pages of plot-significant text. Even that, I skimmed through. Basically, very little of significance happens in this novel, and technically, it cannot be called a novel, either, for it cannot stand on its own. It's like thirty pages of events, distended and made bigger, to fit into a book. Makes more money, that way. You'll only know how much filler there is when you bite in.

    So yes, basically, the series is getting even worse, if that's possible, and it's not yet frigging over just yet. There is still another book. I cannot bear to contemplate that prospect.

    Best avoided. Nothing to see here. Read a plot synopsis if you must. Not recommended.

  • Geoff Battle

    Turtledove's alternate-history-by-numbers continues with the third of the WorldWar series. This chunky tome continues to follow the diverse set of people across the Superpowers as they defend themselves from oppression. The aliens too are struggling to find the resources necessary to fight a prolonged war, light years from home. The story's perspective sways from alien to human throughout the novel, each chapter detailing the horrors of war on our planet. There's no conclusion here, as expected in a middle chapter, however very few of the characters achieve much throughout this book, which ultimately makes it hard going. The final quarter holds some unexpected turns which ensure readers will see it through and return for more.

  • Patti

    Harry Turtledove is an author known for his specialization in Alternate History. He asks the question what if something different had happened at some point in recorded history? In the Worldwar series of novels, Turtledove asks what would have happened if an alien race decided to invade right as World War II was going into full swing?

    Sounds completely implausible, right? That’s what I thought before I began reading these books. I expected to be reading something out of a bad 50’s science-fiction B-movie.

    I have been delightfully surprised.

    For my full review, please see:
    https://thoughtsfromthemountaintop.co...

  • Dan

    Another great book in this series. I am listening to this series because my library does not have this series. The Worlds War continues. Turtledove does such a great job of making the reader root for everyone. How can the Germans work with the English??? Do you think you can root for an alien against mankind? Turtledove spins this so that you do. I can’t wait to see what happens in the remainder of this series. PS Ginger.... wow!! A common spice as a drug for aliens. Brilliant !!

  • Patrik Sahlstrøm

    I gave book #2 5 stars, but dropped down to 3 stars for this one. Why? Because things are getting very longwinded. Way too many viewpoint characters to care for any of them and the mix of lots of romance and military SF doesn't work.

    Still the concept is brilliant, Turtledove writes well and the parts that show the story from the point of view of the aliens are enjoyable. But it is way to wordy to deserve more than 3 stars

  • Matt

    Same review as the others in the series since it is a slow moving saga: Harry Turtledove weaves an intricate alt-history novel that dives deep into character development. The problem is, in my opinion, that he dives too deep. It makes for a very long read - a problem made worse by the author's style of telegraphing his intentions. It's still an enjoyable book and series even if I was looking for something with a bit faster pace.

  • Brad

    The continuing struggle of the alien lizards against WWII era Earth. The war has turned into a battle of attrition, and unfortunately the reading is starting to feel like that. As I have read the books back to back to back, I am starting to tire of the story. I am heading straight onto the last book to finish the saga...

  • Brennon

    I only "kind of" like Harry Turtledove books.
    I am a history buff, so it would seem I should like them.
    His history and detail is commendable.
    His alternate history conjecture seems on the mark , to a point.

    But he has a tendency to carry things a bit too far, this book especially. An interesting premise is then taken in a direction that is a bit off-kilter and a bit hard to read.

  • Richard

    This is more of the same as the second in the series with nukes and rockets added as the Earth defenders improve the tech brought to the war against the aliens. The big question seems to be how much of the world will be left for the human powers to fight over.
    A good read.

  • Shaft

    I like the series but it can definitely drag a bit. It reminds me a bit of John Birmingham's alternate history warfare stories but the differences are clear. Still overall I would call it an interesting read.

  • Brad

    3.5 stars. Another solid book in this very good series

  • Wayne's

    I am enjoying the story but to be honest it goes on and on I think after 3 books the plot would have advanced more.