There is no doubt that Turtledove has thought through all of the details of his work in this alternately history story. The major issue I take with it is how he chooses to tell the story.Rather than one viewpoint character, or even a handful, the reader is bounced to a different person for each scene with few repeats. In fact, his few "main" characters could be argued to have less page time than most other novel's minor ones. For me, it is a slow, plodding process of being introduced to someone new every chapter, and after a while you get wise to the fact that you're probably not going to see them again. All the effort quickly struck me as wasted, and I had to stop about a third of the way through the book.The only reason I didn't give this 1 star is because I feel that Turtledove is a gifted writer, and an exceptional wordsmith, but his choice of how to convey the narrative cripples the story beyond rescue for me.