Name: Bitter Seeds
Rating: 3.666666666666667 (12 reviews)
ISBN: 9780356501697

Ian Tregillis

Bitter Seeds

It’s 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in between Raybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him. When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities—a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present—Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be. Alan Furst meets Alan Moore in the opening of an epic of supernatural alternate history, the tale of a twentieth century like ours and also profoundly different.

Sarah Sammis

Not in the mood.

Here's the thing. WWII was a horrendous war. What makes the Nazis the monsters that they were is that they were human — mortal. Muggle, to borrow Rowling's term.

http://www.pussreboots.com/blog/2018/...

Aaron J Mitchell

** spoiler alert **
           World War 2 set intelligence thriller about an arms race, but rather than nuclear or conventional weapons its between a Nazi super human program (they're basically Nazi Xmen) and British wizards who summon Lovecraft like demons.

The story is fast paced and well told, my only gripe, which is not necessarily a bad thing, was the cliffhanger ending that leaves you hanging for the next book. It wraps up the A plot but teases you with a B plot.

Bryan Alexander

What an intense, sad novel this was. I found it very difficult to stop reading, and images from it remain in my mind.

Bitter Seeds is a crossbreed of three subgenres: superhero, Lovecraftian horror, and alternate history. The plot conceit is that a Nazi research outfit figured out how to create superhumans. In response the British deploy warlocks who summon cosmic horrors. That's pretty good for high concept.

But the novel is told with frantic ferocity. Scenes leap ahead quickly, cutting between actions, often skipping over developments that leave the reader breathless. A sense of catastrophe looms over the plot, throwing the main characters in a harsh light by their relative smallness.

I wrote "sad" up above, because nearly every character suffers badly. Without going into spoilers we see a great deal of physical torment, rape, mental savagery, loss of loved ones, repeated failures, mutilation, shatterd friendships, addiction, and death. It's hard to keep manic speed and melancholy together, but Tregillis certainly pulls it off.

He reminds me of Tim Powers that way. Like The Stress of Her Regard we see fantasy intertwined with emotionally fraught horror and action.

Speaking of Tim Powers, what about that alternate history? (view spoiler)[Setting aside the two major plot devices, WWII goes somewhat awry. The US doesn't enter the war, and the Japanese seem quiet (it's not clear why, which is a problem). The Nazis win the aerial battle of Britain, thanks to one of their ubermenschen, and also overrun Africa, but the British god-beings trash Operation Sealion's Channel-crossing fleet. The Soviets reach Berlin, as in our world, but only because the British beings carve channels for them. The USSR then seems to steamroll further west.  (hide spoiler)] An interesting alt.

There are weaknesses, unfortunately. As others have noted the female characters are second-rate, usually blank or far too thinly described. Also, (view spoiler)[There are big gaps in the alt. history, some of which I mention above. It's not clear what's going on on the eastern front, a typical lapse in most western narratives about WWII (or WWI, for that matter). The finale wraps things up too quickly. (hide spoiler)] 

And yet I can still see young men and women with wires coming out of their heads, starting to glow or change. I can glimpse the corridors of Britain's secret power. I really want to get book 2.

Bitter Seeds

Reviews

Highlights