Book review: The Approaching Sun

Good day one and all. I’ve just finished another book and thought I would review it for you. Of course the opinions are mine and my tastes may not reflect yours. Still, I’ll just throw it up for you to consider.

This book is called The Approaching Sun by S.D. Hildebrand. It’s an alternate history story from World War 2. In this case, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was called off and the Imperial Japanese fleet returned to Japan. Instead, six months later, the Japanese launch an invasion of the continental United States and Canada.

This is an interesting idea. After the attack on December 7, 1941 there was a real fear that the Japanese would so just that. Of course, today we know that the Japanese had no such plan and knew they couldn’t sustain an invasion. Still, an interesting premise. It’s a pity that the novel fails to deliver on this premise.

The author, S.D. Hildebrand, appears to have avoided doing a lot of research. The writing is so wooden, that it more then makes up for all the trees killed to print the book. The American characters tend to be spoiled, self centered jerks, the Japanese unthinking robots and the Germans insane fanatics. There is absolutely no development of the characters and the historical people, (FDR, MacArthur, Halsey, etc.), don’t match their actual historical personalities.

The Japanese land in the Pacific Northwest, (Washington, Oregon and British Columbia), and proceed to loot and pillage their way inland. There is no indication of a plan, no consolidation of gains, nothing at all. This tells me that the author has little to no background in how the military of any nation conducts operations. I can just hear professional military people screaming in rage when they read this book.

On the east coast, the story revolves around an insane Uboat ((U-Boats of WW1 & 2)) commander. He is determined to sink the entire United States Navy and Merchant Marine. Here again, we see how the author completely fails to understand the most basic things about military operations. No submarine commander of any navy is going to ignore his food and fuel states and if he does, his executive officer would remove him for cause.

Both the Japanese forces on land and the Uboat captain are operating with no orders from their respective commands. It isn’t that they are ignoring them, it’s that they aren’t being issued. This is absolute nonsense. One of the reasons we defeated the Nazi’s in the Battle of the Atlantic ((Battle of the Atlantic 1939-1945)) was their tendency to be very chatty and the fact that the Allies. (Great Britain and the United States), had broken the German codes.

Another problem was the reports that the German Fleet was heading for the United States. There is a small problem with this, and it’s called the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy was spoiling for a fight with the German fleet and wanted them to come out and get sunk. By 1942 there was no way the Germans could even think of mounting even a diversionary attack on the North American mainland.

Now I love a good alternate history novel. Harry Turtledove is a master of the art, and at least does his research to some extent. There are a number of others who work in the genre, several of whom I’ve read. This author isn’t one of them.

Therefore, I must recommend against this novel. It had so much potential that was just frittered away. It almost seems that the author just knocked something together over a weekend for a creative writing class, (Which he probably failed) and handed it off to a desperate publisher.

~The Angry Webmaster~