Beyond the Gap: A Novel of the Opening of the World [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

The glacier has been retreating for as long as anyone can remember, but it will always be there, right? There cannot be anything beyond the glacier. But, when a nomadic Bizogot chieftain comes to the capital of the Raumsdalian Empire with the news that there is a newly-opened gap in the glacier, all of the accepted information is thrown into turmoil.

And so, a team is hastily put together to search the gap and find out just what does lie beyond. This is the story of Count Hemnet a haunted but capable man, and his adventures beyond the gap.

Overall, I found this book to be a bit of a disappointment. The first half of the book is filled with heavy dialog and character development, leaving the reader to plod along waiting for something interesting to happen. Finally, when the story begins to pick up, and the action grows interesting - POOF, the book ends!

Now, if the author goes on to make a sequel or two, then the lengthy character development might become valuable. But, as it stands, the book is just too slow, too heavy, and not interesting enough.

By the way, I must agree with the reviews that say that this book is not historical fiction - it is in fact fantasy literature. The story includes working magic, and the distribution of the various elements (horses, reindeer, polar bears, etc.) is a bit anachronistic. (For example, horses were not domesticated until about 4,500 BC.) No, this book is a bit of a disappointment, and I really cannot recommend it.

This appears to be another occurrence of an author whose work I otherwise admire and respect selling out for some quick income.

First, the writing is "talky" and often lazy with adverbs describing said, such as "... said, blandly."

Second, the novel purports to be about a "lost" late bronze or early Iron Age civilization from the end of the last ice age or perhaps from a time between the ice ages, but the dialog often has a distinctly modern tone, to the point of being anachronistic. Many physical items in the story also seemed out of their proper time.

Third, nothing much happens. They go through a gap in the glacier, they briefly encounter some bad guys and don't find what they were looking for; they come back through the glacier and report what they found; and they go north to the Glacier again. The book ends.

Through it all, we follow the emoting of a male character about his ex-wife and a new lover. This would be fitting in a Harlequin romance novel, except the character is an otherwise alpha male, not female, protagonist. Most of the internal dialog from that character is repetitive musings about his evil ex-wife.

I also agree with the other reviewer in his complaints about working magic. The book is a fantasy--nothing wrong with that--not an alternate history.

I repeatedly asked myself as I was reading, did the author bother to read this even once after he wrote the first draft, or did he just send it off to his publisher?

My general opinion of Turtledove's output is that he does better when he's doing stand-alone books than when he's into the second or later volume in a series, and he does better with further-back alternate-history turning points than he does with 19th and 20th century turning points. (Down in the Bottomlands, with a turning point about 6 million years ago, is one of his best ever.) This book bears out that general opinion. It may turn out to be the first in a new series (more about that later) but for now, it appears to be one of a kind.

The turning point for this alternate history appears to be about 12,000 years ago - when, in our world, the last ice age started to end, and the glaciers receded to above the Arctic Circle. I can't be entirely sure how far forward after that turning point we are; civilization seems to have reached a late-Middle-Ages stage, with bows and arrows as weapons, but no crossbows or firearms, and horses being ridden but no mention of stirrups. (Those who have read Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" know that the invention of the stirrup may have been one of the biggest turning points in the history of warfare.) There's writing, but not everybody is literate; there are walled cities, but also nomadic tribes living at a level barely above Stone Age. The overall term for the clans of nomads is "Bizogot" and I don't know whether Turtledove intended us to assume that because this sounds a little like "Visigoth," the proto-Indo-European language that developed into the Western languages we know in our world developed in some similar manner in this fictional world. He may just have meant it to give us rough associations of "barbarians prepared to invade the empire."

As it turns out, however, the barbarians and the Empire must make common cause, due to a new danger from the other side of the glacier, because a gap has opened between east and west. Here is where the book starts to hit weaker moments: there are some logical inconsistancies posited in the lack of knowledge our protagonists have about the newly discovered others (whereas they know about people to the south of the Empire, who presumably have been able to travel further around the world unimpeded by glaciers), and the new people, who style themselves "the Rulers," are portrayed in a strictly cardboard bad-guy fashion. Also, as one previous reviewer mentioned, at this point we get competing wizards performing magic, with no attempt at scientific explanation, which for many people would take the book into the realm of fantasy and per force remove it from alternate history. However, if one is willing to allow one's suspension of disbelief to cover the wizards - there may, after all, be things we do not yet know - then this is not a sticking point. On the other hand, my own perspective on suspension of disbelief gave me a few bad moments at what seemed to me the improbable resolution of the romance between Hamnet and Liv.

The book ends in an open-ended fashion, which is why I suspect there may be a sequel planned, and I would worry about that a little, because if Turtledove were to follow his usual track record, the sequel would be almost entirely about battle plans and the development of new weapons, with very little attention given to any character development, or to any plot outside of war and more war. However, that hasn't happened yet; perhaps I'm worried for nothing. And then, there are many people who seem to LIKE those interminable war series, so you may well have something to look forward to!

Oh yes, one more thing: our protagonist and one of his companions are awful punsters. Read these puns at your own risk!

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 19 reviews  3.3 out of 5 stars