Bitter Seeds (Milkweed Triptych) [Paperback]

There's a trend recently for books about the backroom specialists whose genius helped win the war for the allies - see for instance Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945. I suppose this may have been triggered by revelations about Bletchley Park. It's matched, perhaps, by books about the achievements of wartime German science such as Hitler's Scientists: Science, War and the Devil's Pact.

Tregillis has cleverly blended these genres to produce an original fictional treatment of an alternate world where attempts to produce an army of German supermen (and women) meet their match in Britain's resort to warlockery, coordinated by a secret section in the Admiralty. This is an audacious concept which, on the whole, he pulls off very well. Magic is not without cost - the research efforts of the (real) enemies in the Second World War gave rise to technologies that still threaten us, as, in this book, do their fictional occult counterparts. I particularly liked the parallel developments in England and Germany - both of which start with the recruitment of needy children, that in England done in a much kindlier way than in Germany (at least, so it seems).

This is an entertaining, page turning story, which I have just had to sit down and finish, and I'd highly recommend it. I hope that more is to come from Tregillis.

I only had two quibbles with it. First (and I know I'm about to sound like a huffy pedant) though large parts of the book are set in England, the (American) author hasn't quite, as it were, "localised" things enough. As an English reader that bothered me slightly, but I had to think about the issue quite carefully. I admit (reluctantly) that I can't object to - for example - the use of "sidewalk" for "pavement" or to an idiom like "they turned left onto Shaftesbury" (dropping the "Avenue"). An American author describing events in Britain (or Germany, or Mars, for that matter) is going to use idioms familiar to him. Fine so far. But I think that a different standard applies where an author puts words into his characters' mouths and that he should - for example - take care not to use "gotten" for "got", or pay attention in some of the cases where the forms of verbs apparently differ (I never realised that this was actually the case, but when you see "teared" instead of "tore" you realise how tricky this stuff can get). Equally, I'm pretty sure that a wedding in London in the 1930s could not have taken place in a private garden (I don't think it would be legal to do that even now).

These are only tiny details, but they did - for me - undermine the overall (excellent) effect.

Secondly I was left slightly baffled by a couple of plot strands that seemed to go nowhere. Who was the strange figure with the beard and scar who turned up a at night and vanished into thin air? There was a lot made of him but I didn't understand who he was or what his point was. A loaded gun, on the wall, that was, in effect, never fired. I was also unclear about Gretel's motivation (I won't go into details as they would be spoilers). Maybe these are hooks for sequels - or perhaps I'm just being dim!

Anyway, to summarise, a wonderful book, it deserves to be read widely, I hope that more follow from this author (including, perhaps, a direct sequel?)

EDIT 6/1/12

Sequel is on its way - The Coldest War - with the third part to come after. Can't wait!

1939. In the closing weeks of the Spanish Civil War, British intelligence agent Raybould Marsh is dispatched to meet an informant who claims to have vital information about some of Nazi Germany's top-secret weapons being field-tested in the conflict. The informant explodes in front of Marsh with no apparent cause. As the clock ticks down to war between Britain and Germany, it is discovered that Germany has developed technology that can turn certain, gifted individuals into super-beings, people who can turn invisible, manipulate fire or even predict the future.

Britain's fortunes in the war turn sour as the Germans seem to be constantly one step ahead of them, destroying the transports carrying out the evacuation of Dunkirk and striking down the radar towers that will be needed to protect the country from Luftwaffe bombing. But Britain is not completely unprotected, and the newly-formed Milkweed organisation has resources to call upon which dwarf even the powers of the German ubermensch. But these powers are not to be summoned lightly...

Bitter Seeds is Ian Tregillis' debut novel and is a brash, refreshing alt-history which sees Nazi superhumans and British warlocks battling to the death during WWII. It's a cool premise, generally well-handled with a large and complex story being effectively told through a small number of POV characters on both sides. However, if the story sounds too big to be contained within a single volume, you would be right. In an increasingly annoying trend in modern SFF publishing, Bitter Seeds is the first novel in a trilogy (dubbed The Milkweed Triptych) despite this fact not being mentioned anywhere on the cover or inside the book. The story doesn't come to an end or really any kind of conclusion, just screeches to a halt 350 pages in with a number of stories broken off mid-flow. The follow-up volumes will be entitled The Coldest War and Necessary Evil.

That out the way, Bitter Seeds works successfully on a number of levels. Characters are drawn pretty well, with British secret agent Raybould Marsh being an effective central character, driven by passion and rage, whilst his amateur magician friend, Will Beauclerk, makes a good foil for him. Will's story assumes greater importance as the novel proceeds, culminating in some shocking moments near the end of the book that hint that his role in the sequels will be very interesting indeed. The opposing characters, such as Klaus and his River Tam-like sister Gretel, are also intriguing characters, although the way Tregillis handles Gretel's potentially tension-destroying prescience (by making her a whimsical fruitcake who sometimes lets the Nazis lose battles due to the callings of A Higher Plan) seems to be dramatically unsatisfying, with Gretel working as a constant deus ex machina-in-residence, who may or may not defeat our heroes' plans at the whim of the author.

Elsewhere, Tregillis has done his homework, with WWII Britain described in convincing detail and atmosphere, even if the book's (relatively) slim page count means that some elements need to be skipped or drawn only in broad strokes. His alteration of history is well-conceived but is a little inconsistent: at first it appears that the Nazi superhumans will be providing explanations for real oddities in the war (like the ease with which the German armoured columns passed through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes Forest), but later the outcome and course of the war shifts very dramatically away from the historical, and in fact becomes credence-stretching by the time we get to the end of the novel. This is fair in that it reflects the tone and plot of the novel, as supernatural forces become increasingly prevalent in their impact on the world, but those who prefer their alt-history to be more closely tied to real events may be underwhelmed as the book deviates radically from established history by the end.

Tregillis has a nice way with words, particularly in descriptive prose, but this is inconsistent. Nice, flowing prose is replaced by a more prosaic, infodump-heavy mode with little forewarning, increasingly favouring the latter as the novel progresses. This is disappointing as Tregellis' writing is what lifts the book above more plot-driven WWII alt-histories by the likes of Harry Turtledove and John Birmingham, but as the book continues to unfold his prose becomes more ordinary and less engaging.

All of that said, the book is short, fast-paced and, for all its faults, remains something of a page-turner. It is the finely-judged character interrelationships, particularly the increasingly tense friendship between Raybould and Will and the fraught sibling relationship of Klaus and Gretel, which defines the novel and leaves the reader eager to read on into the next novel.

Bitter Seeds (***½) fails to live up to its full potential, but remains an effective and readable debut novel. It is available now in the USA and on import in the UK.

I was lucky enough to find Bitter Seeds in Scotland at the house we were staying in on our vacation. Of course I grabbed the opportunity to read something that has been on my wishlist for ages!

It's a very good alternative history book although it's pretty dark and depressing and doesn't really have a happy ending. At times it reminded me Lightning by Dean Koontz, although the latter is written better.

I don't think there is only one main character in Bitter Seeds, it's much more complicated than that.

On British side there is Marsh, a secret agent, whose chance encounter with a strange gypsy woman with the wires from her head, starts the whole Milkweed project - a reconnaissance mission to find out what the Germans experiment with and how Brits can stop them. There is also Marsh's old friend, young warlock Will, whose aristocratic family passes the skill from father to one of his sons each generation.

From German side there are brother and sister, Klaus and Gretel. He is the invisible man, and she is a precog. And let me tell you something about Gretel. She is beautiful, clever, strange and very, very unhinged. She is perhaps a mastermind in Bitter Seeds, a catalyst for a lot of very tragic events, and in a way she is more terrifying than the evil German scientist who first starts the project that increases the strength of human will and turn children into X-men. She is more terrifying than The Indolans - universal magical entity who just want to destroy humanity but can't without the warlocks marking their way with our blood...

This is a dark book, violent and at the same time fitting to the whole topic of Second World War. The only happy end you'll get is the inevitable victory of the Allies, but the people involved into the project would never be normal again.

I especially felt sorry for Will, who destroyed himself, his psyche and his vitality, so Britain could win the war, and for Klaus who only wanted to protect his sister and for them both to survive.

Bitter Seeds is... well, a bitter, but very interesting debut novel. Recommended.