Into the Darkness (Darkness Series #1) Book

This is a 2.5. I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I love the idea of re-telling, re-seating World War II in a fantasy settings. It has all the ingredients for a really cool re-telling. Dragons, behemoths, leviathans. unicorns with nations using them as tools of war. However, Turtledove has never been an easy read for me. His is neither evocative or clean or beautiful. It is serviceable. History for him is what is important, and that is fine.

Where this novel (and I expect series) fails is there are too many places, too many characters in too many places going on. He fails because he tries to re-tell the entire war with a gigantic cast of characters. I had to have cheat sheet with all of the POV characters and where they reside, so I could keep track of them. With such a big cast, everyone but a tiny few (like a couple) are just flat, cardboard characters and never grow. Maybe this improves as the series moves on, but right now, its disappointing. So much could be interesting here, but it is a cool setting full of uninteresting people in the midst of war.

I will try Darkness Descending and see if it improves.