Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis

Charles Stross had Ian Tregillis as a guest blogger on his blog a little while back and in his introduction he compared this series strongly to his Laundry books. That's high praise in my opinion and when I read that Bitter Seeds is about an alternative World War 2 where the Germans are using people with super powers and the English have employed demon summoners to counter them, it pretty much got added to the top of my to read list.

Just as an aside, I do this a lot. Books often find there way onto my to read list at the top, including the one I'm reading at the moment. I try and counter this by not reading book after book in a series and forcing myself to read something random off the list at least once a week. That's actually how I got reading the Sara Creasy books from last week.

So Bitter Seeds is the first book in the Milkweed Triptych with the next one moving to the next era in world conflict with the Coldest War. The third book will be out later this year.

I thought this book was terrific. It presents the war with viewpoint characters on both sides. From the English you have Raybould Marsh, an SIS (WW2 MI6) operative and Will, a would-be demon summoner. On the German side you have Klaus, one of the Reich's supermen with the ability to walk through walls. His sister Gretel is a powerful precognitive and her visions guide the war down very different paths then the WW2 history most of us are familiar with. That's half the fun if you're at all familiar with the real WW2 events.

At the same time, it doesn't rosy things up at all. The tone of the first part of the book is upbeat when both sides are feeling like the war will be a short successful one, but things get dark very quickly. The methods that the Nazis use to control their pet supermen are brutal and produce people that are either broken, brutish or insane. The English are forced to pay ever more horrific prices in blood to get their demons to do what they want as well. The demons themselves are more like Stross's otherworldly super-intelligences.

Another first in a series that I'm looking forward to following.

Currently Reading: Well I was reading Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs (the new Mercy Thompson book) when I started writing this, but I've been convalescing after eye surgery so I've actually read that and another book since. I'm actually halfway through Tempting Danger by Eileen Wilks at the moment.

In Other News: The James Tiptree, Jr award was given this week and The Drowning Girl by Caitlin Kiernan was the joint winner with a short story collection by Kiini Ibura Salaam called Ancient, Ancient. Honorable mentions went to 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson and Up Against It by M. J. Locke (I guess I wasn't the only one who liked it) among others. I mention those because I've written about them in this blog before. One of the honorable mentions went to Elizabeth Bear's Range of Ghosts which is also on my to read list, so I guess I'd better bump that one up a bit.