Where someone you care about meets an untimely end? When you realize that you cannot think of a way to turn things around so, "The good guys can win? I experienced those sensations a lot in this book. And it drove me to keep going to see how it would all turn out. This is edge of your seat stuff and is very well crafted. John Birmingham treats characters, technology, tactics and battles with a deftness that melds a large canvas into a seamless whole.
There are a number of separate story lines that link together, sometimes in unexpected ways, but always in a fashion that is relatable and believable. In this second volume, the effects of the modern day battle group being transported back to World War II continue to play out.
Story lines continue to evolve and it is interesting how each of the warring factions make use of the new technology they have obtained. Alliances are not what they seem, prejudices continue to shape events, and watching how the world evolves in the face of all this is extremely captivating. If you enjoyed the first novel in the trilogy, I can guarantee you will be swept up by this one. You will see why! Am absolute must buy for fans of alternative history or military fiction.
Jul 28, Sebastien rated it it was amazing. I'm truly sucked into this series. There are times where it can get kind of cheesy and lame, but those instances are few and far between. The violence is there and it is good: 21st-century Prince Harry going back in time and knifing Nazis in the throat is my jam. I just wish that John Birmingham had added illustrations to the book; that's to say, maps that show where the fleets are, borders, etc.
View 1 comment. However, read Weapons of Choice first, as this is a direct sequel. Sep 16, Ryan rated it it was amazing. Stop whatever you are doing, don't walk, RUN to the book store you need a actual physical copy these are so good and call work faking a cough, because you are going to be doing nothing but reading these books for at least a few days. I don't give many books 5 stars and even less series but these are worth every star and every minute you will spend reading them.
I couldn't read it fast enough It was certainly a page turner. Characters were Well drawn. The author was wise to humanize them with emotions both. Andy's review Thoroughly enjoyed this - as good as the first one, it really is a page turner. I am now going to start the third one in the trilogy! Aug 22, Joe rated it really liked it. The permutations stay interesting. A good series for military SF! Jul 07, MikeB rated it liked it. Good book Audio but annoying narration. Jan 12, Aaron rated it really liked it.
Much better than the first book. Far less cheese. Great sequel. Frenetic pace, logical. Thots while reading: I am having mixed emotions while reading this book. It is a great premise: a carrier battle group from the future is sent back through time into the 'middle' of World War II.
This is the second book in a series based on that premise. I will say this much about it: it is holding my interest enough to keep reading it. At the same time, I cannot say how impressed I am with how it is going, so far. Bones to pick: it is beyond irritating that even though the Germans and Japanese e Thots while reading: I am having mixed emotions while reading this book.
Bones to pick: it is beyond irritating that even though the Germans and Japanese end up with only two vessels from the future, they are doing more with what little they have as opposed to the Allies who have a veritable treasure trove and are doing jack with what they 'have. The book takes place several months after the first book, so the continuity is lousy.
Not only that, starting out with some guy and some woman hunting down Elvis Presley? That's the first chapter in the book? With the book jumping forward several months after the end of the first book, it would probably have been a great idea to have had some kind of introductory 'forward' in the book to bring people up to speed.
Japan pulls back in order to invade New Guinea and Australia. Germany is planning to invade England after arranging another truce with Russia. It seriously bugs me that some of the 'lost' naval vessels appeared 'elsewhere' when reappearing. Like how the Vanguard supposedly appeared in Russian territory well before the fleet appeared at Midway. Or another vessel was embedded in the side of a mountain in the first book. It's probably 'little stuff' that has some kind of reasonable explanation, but it still bugs me.
Perhaps if I ever come across the 'reasonable explanation' it won't bug me as much. I doubt it, but maybe. I do find it interesting that none of the American naval vessels seem to be carrying any kind of nuclear warheads. Perhaps there was a reason given for it in the first book, and I missed it. Ah, well. It seems a little far-fetched. But then again, so does an aircraft carrier named after Hillary Clinton.
It is almost like there is no longer any kind of fighting going on elsewhere in the world. No battles are mentioned anywhere else, so far. Just Australia and England. It's kinda weird, in a way. I'm about halfway through the book right now, so we'll see how it ends up.
For a book that is about 'World War II' and about the entire world being at war, it sure limits its focus. It seems as if the war has essentially stopped except in three places [Australia, England, and Hawaii].
It just seems Despite having finished the book, I am still not quite sure how I feel about it. Neither am I sure as to whether or not I am glad I read it. Other than Hawaii being captured and the invasion of England being thwarted [both of which are 'very big deals', no doubt about it], not much else happens. The author seems to delve entirely too much into Hoover and the FBI. Who cares about the man? It becomes a distraction in the story. I do not know if the author had some kind of axe to grind about the former head of the FBI, but it grew quite tiresome well before the end of the book.
It still bugs me that the Axis powers are able to use atomic weapons and it seems like the Allies cannot. I realize weapons were used to take out the Tirpitz battle group, but it still seemed anti-climactic. It bugs me that even though the Axis have limited access to uptime technology, they are able to put it to better use than the Allies, which seems completely bogus to me.
It feels like shoddy storytelling. It was an okay book. Instead of focusing on how the technology was changing warfare, the author seemed to focus on unimportant, non-essential stuff in the book.
Perhaps some of what he focused on was more important than I realized, but it did not seem that way. It seemed like the author had some kind of axe to grind that the Allies won the Second World War and not the Axis powers. I do not want to have a completely negative review. The best part of the book was Prince Harry, a leader in the SAS and now stuck back in time before his grandmother was both married and Queen of England.
I did enjoy the parts with Prince Harry in them. I also liked the fact that there were saboteurs who helped spoil the plans of the Axis powers. So there you go. I'm still leaving it at two stars.
Recommended to David by: The guy that first showed me dopeland. Shelves: sci-fi. Interesting premise, failed execution 9 November I had read the first book in this trilogy and thought it was okay so when I discovered that the second book had been released I decided that I would snap it up as well. Mind you, that was in the days when I seemed to be buying more books than I was reading and in a way I am still essentially doing that, though I have managed to resist buying too many books of late.
However, that doesn't seem to stop me from adding more and more books to my 't Interesting premise, failed execution 9 November I had read the first book in this trilogy and thought it was okay so when I discovered that the second book had been released I decided that I would snap it up as well. However, that doesn't seem to stop me from adding more and more books to my 'to-read' list on Goodreads. This book continues from where the first book left off: a group of 21st century soldiers are sent back in time to World War II and inevitably disrupt the time continuum and thus send the 20th Century off in a new direction.
Initially the concept seemed to be interesting, and the plot was enjoyable, but there was one really big problem: the allies simply seemed to still be on the winning side. Okay, granted, we probably would not like to be living in a world that had been overrun by the facist dictatorships of the s, but that is beside the point. Despite the fact that Hitler had discovered his mistakes, still did not mean that he was able to capitalise on that knowledge.
In some ways I have liked some of the speculative fiction that comes out of the what would have happened if the fascists won World War II, but in the end the truth is that it would not have been pretty. I suspect what would have happened is that once again the world would have settled into a spot where at the centre of civilisation you would have peace and on the fringes you would have perpetual war. I suspect that the United States may have survived, protected by its moat, though it could have lost Hawaii, and Europe would have been overrun by the Nazi's.
Russia would still be under the grip of the Communists, and Asia would be a Japanese empire. However, the only way Hitler could have won was if he had focused his attacks on the Middle East by striking through Turkey, and then pushing up through the Caucasus. That way he would have had control of major oil regions. I doubt Japan could have managed to conquer China, and even then it would have been a Phyrric victory as it would have been likely that they would be forever putting down resistance China is just too massive a territory to be able to be controlled by an outside force.
I suspect Hitler would have had that problem as well. Another thing that I did not like about this book was the apparent right wing undertones. I found that his rather brutal descriptions of the behaviour of the extremists was a little off putting, because simply put, not all Muslims behave in that way. We love pointing at the Muslims and labelling all of them as extremists, but Christians also have to put up with that as well.
It is true that the extremists seem to rise to the top, and it is their attitudes and actions that people most remember. In reality, the extremists tend to only be a minority, albeit a rather loud minority, and a majority simply want to be left alone and to live their life peacefully.
It is different in places like Palestine and Lebanon where many of them live in abject poverty, and blame the Israelis and the Americans for their situations. The idea of the suicide bomber here is not so much a religious thing despite it being clothed in religious language but rather a political issue in regards to human rights and the access to land. It was the same in Iraq. It is true that Al-Queda did attempt to break into Iraq, but the war and the insurgency was more of a nationalist movement than anything else.
The Shiites in Southern Iraq had a much stronger following due to the nationalist interests, while the Sunni extremists in central Iraq ended up losing group not because the Americans were winning, but because they simply did not want to give up their freedom to religious extremists.
Feb 26, F. Schaefer rated it liked it Shelves: world-war-ii , alternate-history. Maybe that was because WEAPONS had to devote a lot of time to setup and exposition, as a flotilla of a 21st Century multinational navy flotilla is flung through a wormhole and winds up smack in the middle of World War II on the eve of the battle of Midway. Just to even things up, ships from and their lethal technology, end up equally among the Allies and Axis powers, thus upending history and giving both sides a chance to annihilate the other.
It also allows the world of 70 years ago a chance to peak into its future and for many, such Hitler and his henchmen, they do not like what they see. In other words, those who are forewarned are forearmed. The primary focus of TARGETS is the war itself, unlike the first book, not nearly so much space is taken up with the inevitable cultural clash between the past and the future. A section of California has been assigned to the Time Travelers by the United States government where they are free to live as they please racially integrated and sexually tolerant as they aid the Allied war effort.
Other units are active at the battle fronts in the Pacific, where Japan has invaded Australia, and in Europe, where Stalin has made peace with Hitler, thus allowing the Nazis to assemble an invasion force to throw against Great Britain. Both sides, along with the Soviets, are now in a nuclear arms race, each determined to be the first to get the Bomb and win the war.
Author John Birmingham really does have a Tom Clancy like touch when it comes to describing guns, warships, airplanes both jets and 20th Century fighters along with modern tech; he is able to explain things well to the uninitiated. And, unlike Clancy, I believe Birmingham is better at creating believable characters-for the most part.
There is a large cast of characters as the action shifts from Australia to Hawaii to California to Great Britain to Germany to the Soviet Union, with a mixture of historical personages and fictional creations interacting.
Other interesting chapters concern the fighting in Australia on the Brisbane Line as the Allies push back against a brutal Japanese invasion and a contemporary German who infiltrates the Reich and comes face to face with his Nazi ancestors.
In Washington, J. Edgar Hoover is not happy that rumors about his private life have leaked out from the history books the people from the future possess, while a couple of opportunists have looked up Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and the young Elvis Presley years before fame came knocking at their doors in our time. Some reviewers detected a liberal political slant because a 21st Century American naval vessel is named the Hillary Clinton, but I think the criticism is unfair, this is a book which could be enjoyed by liberals and conservatives equally, but most especially by history buffs.
For a middle book in a trilogy, where the story usually treads a lot of water, a lot happens. The book works well as military and historical fiction, although not really Alternate History, it can be considered science fiction. Jan 20, D. One thing in a book that relies on so much historical fact and then supposition, is the attention to detail.
Do we think that the American and Japanese fleets can return from the area of Midway with damaged ships, settle into harbor in less than seven days and start stripping the new weapons from the future this quickly?
Can we see these two fleets returning to their home ports and all the combatants returning to the complacency of routine so quickly? Can we see the events that take place in the One thing in a book that relies on so much historical fact and then supposition, is the attention to detail.
Can we see the events that take place in the book in one day in Pearl really happening in that one day? Can we see a fleet coming from the future and deciding that the Japanese who history tells us would gladly end the war for oil and had hoped that the USA would craft such a deal after the devastation of their initial onslaught are such a horrible enemy that they need to be defeated and that the limited ammunition that the people of the future should be expended on them?
If all the great minds of the fleet could know about the attrocities of the Bataan death camps, and the sex slavery of the white women captives, why did they miss this analysis of the Japanese High Command. If the US had sued for Peace, the Japanese would have stopped their war.
This then would leave the visitors from the future with enough firepower to destroy all the ships in an entire nations fleet, to pursue the real meglomaniacal ruler of the age, Hitler. How can one weigh the atrocities of the Japanese, verse the atrocities of the US I can hardly wait till Birmingham with all the discussion of race and sex values of the WWII White superiority structure examines what the US did to Japanese Americans in such places as Manzanar, but I can only think that we may not see that discussed at all.
Getting rid of the Nazi high command not German, but the Nazi's would be a service to the world that any time traveller worth hald his salt could be proud of. It would be a blessing for the world. How many died in concentration camps, 11 Million? The German with the son with the cleft palette sees it cleary-his son will be toast How many died from Hitlers murderour assault into Russia where the attrocities of the Nazis rival those of the Japanese protrayed in the book.
One thing that is bothersome is that we know that war is black, white and mostly gray. Certainly one can not preach a moral superiority in war. The US killed how many thousands at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? So trying to show righteous indignation over the Japanese attitude to war and not give the US any faults seems to be an imbalance in morality.
What does that have to do with the story The attitudes expressed in all the modern characters doesn't gel because of it. They end up more self righteous then the white naval officers of Then with the time continuity thrown off and some things so making no sense If you have a temporal event, great, and if you have it cenered so it is a circle, fine, but then to have everything conform to that circle so the heroes you know, the US ends up with the greater amount of power, and the bad guys end up with a little bit, but only because then the circle has to not be a circle, though everything was in the circle That is a part of physics that doesn't make sense just for a plot device, bad form Jan 25, James rated it really liked it Shelves: alternate-history.
Birmingham's weaponry details have improved in this second book. But as the action has moved to Australia and England -- that's not surprising since Birmingham is a British-born Aussie -- it may come as no surprise that the hero of this book is Major Prince of Wales Harry Windsor.
Harry was a mere cameo in the initial book, "Weapons of Choice", and I had expected, even wished, that his role would broaden. As the theatre of war moves to his realm pun intended , Harry comes to the foreground nu Birmingham's weaponry details have improved in this second book. As the theatre of war moves to his realm pun intended , Harry comes to the foreground numerous times.
As the story progresses from the initial history-as-past and moves into a newly revised history of the past, most of my prior objections to book one disappear. Birmingham excellently envisions obliques and tangents of the situations created when this task force arrives crippled in The book is extremely violent. Of course war should not be white washed, but the most violent aspects of the book are lingering bouts of torture--especially the death of Nikita Khruschev--and I'm not convinced that these moments of uber-reality are necessary.
But all in all this is quite a good book. Birmingham has concocted some excellent twists in the plot as well as the fabric of time and I look forward to the final installation of this series.
Since I felt that my 3-star rating of the first book a bit harsh, I will soften to although this book 4 stars. It is a good read. Dec 28, Simeonberesford rated it liked it Shelves: science , fiction , ebook , of , oct06 , time , travel , alternate , history , axis. This, part two of th trilogy, is set some months after the events of part one.
Set during World War Two The cultural differences between the Allies and theMultinational taskf orce from our near future stranded there is becomeing more and more apparent to both sided. Amongst others Hoover of the FBI is gunning for the uptimers. Stalin it seems is not happy at This, part two of th trilogy, is set some months after the events of part one. Stalin it seems is not happy at the predicted. At one point beyond all reason Churchill carefully explains to a group of British officers that the reason Britain must not be occupied by the Germans is because this would deny Americans a foothold in europe!
Sep 09, Keith rated it liked it Shelves: alternative-history. Part two of Axis of Time takes up a few weeks after the end of Weapons of Choice. Technology and knowledge of the Task Force's history is firmly in the grasp of all the major players, the Soviets and Nazis take the opportunity to purge know dissenters and all sides are pushing on in the race to nuclear weaponry.
Munitions are running short and the US are having problems bootstrapping the new technologies to develop new weapons. The difficulties caused by the integration of the newcomers causes t Part two of Axis of Time takes up a few weeks after the end of Weapons of Choice. Title: Designated Targets.
Typically 7" by 4. It continues John Birminghams speculation about what would have happened if a 21st battle fleet had been transported, through a somewhat plausible accident, to the middle of the Pacific in Designated Target eBook por Laura Baumbach - A soldier returns to his commander's hometown to tell his brother the truth about what happened in the field and Harlequin Designated Target.
SCP will expand by extruding tendrils at an extremely high rate, ensnaring any moving organisms or objects, designated "targets. Designated Targets book by John Birmingham 1 available This is the era of Luke Skywalker's legacy: the Jedi Master has unified the order into a cohesive group of powerful Jedi Knights. But as the new era begins, planetary interests threaten to disrupt this time of relative peace, and Luke is plagued with visions of an approaching darkness.
Evil is risin Designated Targets - Wikipedia. Plot summary. It is September , four months after the Transition. A cease-fire has been signed between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and the dictators have re-established their June OATargets: a knowledge base of genes associated with Objectives To collate the genes experimentally modulated in animal models of osteoarthritis OA and compare these data with OA transcriptomics data to identify potential therapeutic targets.
Methods PubMed searches were conducted to identify publications describing gene modulations in animal models. Analysed gene expression data were retrieved from the SkeletalVis database of analysed The target of the annotation is identified in a child hasTarget property of the annotation object.
In the case of an EPUB Publication, the annotation m ay reference a fragment thereof as described in 2. Birmingham has a habit of making simple, basic mistakes in his Kindle books that distract from the plot and storyline. Effects of task-switching on neural representations of Epub Sep Axis of Time - Wikipedia.
The Axis of Time trilogy is an alternative history series of novels written by Australian journalist and author John Birmingham, from Macmillan Publishing.. The novels deal with the radical alteration of the history of World War II and the socio-historical changes that result when a technologically advanced naval task force from the year is accidentally transported back through time to The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www. Designated Target. Sign in to Purchase Instantly.
0コメント