Harry Turtledove's Worldwar Series

[Tyyr]

Anyone else read them? Tropes Page The Other Wiki

Personally I'm finishing up the first in the series and so far I'm enjoying it. I think the factions involved are having perfectly reasonable reactions to what's happening and he's able to convey the feeling of this kind of war very vividly.

[Deepcrush]

I've read most of the 181 series and found them enjoyable. I've thought about picking these up at some point when I have time/money/money to do so.

[Tyyr]

Well the first one is pretty good. It covers about 6 months of the invasion and across a lot of characters so it's far from a day by day, blow by blow account from any one person's perspective. It's also far more into the political and social aspects than anything. I like it though.

[Sionnach Glic]

I enjoyed them, though I felt that they got a bit repetative towards the end of the series. They're still worth a read though.

If you enjoyed them, I'll direct you towards the Colonization series. It's basically a sequel series to World War. It's set in the 1980's, and deals with how Earth is adapting to the presence of the Race, and how they're adapting to us. I actually found them quite a bit more interesting than the initial series, due to their greater attention to the various social and political effects of a race of alien lizards trying to invade us.

[Tyyr]

I'm planning on working my way through the entire series of this.

[Graham Kennedy]

I read the first two or three of the Worldwar series waaaaay back long ago. I remember enjoying them, but they dragged on a bit and I never came close to finishing them.

[Aaron]

The spot IMO is the issue of why the Race is there is never really addressed. Why did they come lightyears and invade? What did they want? And why couldn't they get it in their own solar system or the two others? Is there some uber-mineral they need? Are they just dicks?

[Tyyr]

My read of it is that the Race are just dicks. They're expanding because they can expand and their view of the universe puts them on top as rightful rulers. So they're going to go show those backwards savages who the real rulers of the universe are and that they'd better bow to the Emperor.

Ya know, pretty much the reason people went to war for the first 20,000 years of human history.

[Sionnach Glic]

It seems to be a sort of religious thing for them. Their Emperor is treated like a divine being, so if he says conquer (perhaps simply for the prestige of being known as someone who conquered another race) they'll go and do it.

[Tyyr]

Turtledove made it a point to show that they don't have FTL drives. So there's no real way to set up any interstellar commerce without something ridiculously valuable like Avatar's unobtanium. It's a very imperial mindset I think, to rule everything and everyone they see.