Hey, cool, another book-in-a-day event. Okay, it was an airport day to some reasonable extent, but still, it’s a rare thing, and I always have to groove on it when it occurs. So, yeah, another second book in a trilogy, too, this time Star Wars’ Dark Nest (which I was yesterday given to understand bridges the gap between the New Jedi Order series and a forthcoming new multi-book sequence).

The Unseen Queen picks up a year after the last book. The Jedi are in as precarious a position relative to the government as they ever were under the Old Republic (except for not being hunted down and murdered, I suppose), due to a combination of bad press over their defense of the hive-mind insects from that book and a certain moral looseness within their own ranks. And then, of course, the Dark Nest starts to make a new move that could threaten the galaxy forever. (I feel like that ought to have been exclaimed rather than stated, but: no.)

It felt like quite a bit better of a book than the last one. Luke’s discoveries about his lineage that kept me interested last time were doled out more sparingly here, but the storyline was substantially better and the Joiner aggravation reduced, so on the whole I’m happy with proceeding toward the end. (I guess the book is out already?) This is good, because it would kind of suck to dislike the bridge to an entire sequence. Contrariwise, I hope it isn’t actually about all the insect hive folks, because they’ll have about outlived their interestingness by then. I’m pretty sure it will be about something a lot better, though, if I’ve properly gauged where the recent releases are going these days, though. Something rather more Chiss, say.

I have this weird relationship with Harry Turtledove; about half of his books I see, and I roll my eyes and move on, whereas the other half I’m intensely interested in, and buy them as soon as they appear at the used bookstore. Part of it is the whole learning about history thing, as even though it’s fake history, the basis is still very solid and usable. Part of it is the style, certainly. I just like watching all these different people react to different circumstances and identical news and so forth. Part of it is an almost certainly unreasonable romanticism in my head with the South. Plucky, heroic, and just evil enough to be ultimately doomed anyway.

As for this second book of the Settling Accounts trilogy, it is by now completely unreviewable sans spoilers; the story has moved too far along. But for the most part, the specific events aren’t the point. It would be like telling a 3rd grader about the atomic bomb at Hiroshima when all he really knew was that WWII vaguely existed. Thusly, I proceed.

In short, the Confederate States have, um, risen again after being defeated soundly for the first time in their history in World War I, thanks to the charismatic leadership of President Jake Featherston, whose two-plank platform of punishing the damnyankees and solving the “colored problem” once and for all have allowed him to prosecute an excellent war plan through the end 1941 and part of 1942. However, his tenuous hold on sanity is starting to slip, now that the United States have failed to surrender according to plan. Meanwhile, the death camps have begun to turn out some real efficiency, and a secret U.S. project promises to bear explosive fruit.

So, whatever. It’s WWII, and because these are Americans rather than Europeans, some of the motivations are more clear, at least to me. The most disturbing part is how I really kind of want the bad guys to win, despite disagreeing with virtually all of their actions. It helps that the U.S. people are not particularly clean-handed in this war either (as many of them want to eradicate Mormons as C.S. residents want to eliminate the blacks), and that unlike anything I’ve ever heard about Germany and the Jews, both groups of Americans have a reason. (I do not claim that it is, or that there could be, an acceptable reason. I just mean it’s nice to comprehend how they got there. Also, I’m done being apologetic about it, ’cause that’s boring.) As usual, I’ll read the next one once I eventually see it on a shelf, probably about this time next year.