by John Birmingham
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Product Description
“The action is nonstop, the characters very real–and very different from each other–and, to coin a phrase, it makes you think.”
–S. M. Stirling, author of Island in the Sea of Time
In the year 2021 a multinational fleet–experimenting with untested weapons technology–pitched through time, crash-landing in 1942. The world is thrown into chaos as Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, Tojo, and Stalin scramble to adapt to new, high-tech killing tools, and twenty-first-century ways of war.
For “uptimers” like Britain’s Prince Harry and the men and women who serve aboard the supercarrier USS Hillary Clinton, war is a constant struggle with their own downtime allies, who are mired in ignorance and bigotry.
As the Allies counter the Nazi assault and set off for the coast of France, Japan begins to buckle, soon every battle will be played out in a lethal dance of might and intelligence, unholy alliances and desperate gambles, and each clash will be fought with the ultimate weapon; knowledge from the future.
Thanks to the historical records, all sides know that two superpowers will emerge, while the losers will be pounded into submission. But time has shifted on its axis, so none know who will survive, or how peace will take hold in a world turned upside down. These are the questions that John Birmingham brilliantly answers in his critically acclaimed adventure of war and imagination.
Praise for John Birmingham’s Weapons of Choice
“Birmingham’s enthralling battleground mixes provocative historical fiction and socially conscious futurism.”
–Entertainment Weekly
“High-tech intrigue and suspense similar to the works of Tom Clancy.”
–Library Journal
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 First-rate Ending to a Superb Trilogy, 2007-11-02
John Birmingham resists the temptation to tie up his excellent military fantasy into a neat little package. The altered time-line continues past the finish, issues unresolved, fates hanging in the balance, and the massive collision of 21st- and 20th-century technologies and sensibilities promising looming horrors--and thrilling potentialities-- unimagined in either original universe. Or not. I found my mind as busy at the end imagining possible futures as ever it was at the beginning, and that seems to me the very essence of excellence in speculative fiction.
I wonder if he will write further into this altered universe. Having enjoyed the trilogy so much, I might hope so. However, he need not, having left us with an as-yet-unimagined future unrolling before his engaging characters.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Started with a bang. Ended with a whimper., 2007-11-01
I did enjoy the first novel quite a bit. Then the second one was a bit worse, but the third was pretty bad. Many other reviewers have touched on what went wrong. Here are two other points that I'd like to add:
1. Birmingham needs to learn how to finish a story arc. At any given point in time, I counted over 30 different threads to keep track of. Needless to say, there were a lot of loose ends he unsuccessfully tried to wrap up. For example, the murders of the officers was urgent and interesting when it happened at the end of book one. But it was long overdue and boring by the time he resolved it several hundred pages later at the end of book three with scarcely a mention in between.
2. What is up with his man-crush on Prince Harry? In real life, Harry is a drunken twit who prances around in a Nazi costume complete with swastikas, gets caught doing drugs and drunk in public repeatedly (recently caught snorting vodka), chickens out of actually going to Iraq with his unit, and this week is been questioned for shooting two rare birds (only 20 breeding pairs in all of England) for sport. This guy is a first class moron, yet Birmingham makes him the second coming of Rambo in the book.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
An entertaining read, 2007-10-19
This review is being written after having read all three of Mr. Birmingham's "Axis of Time" books, so it's really a review of the whole series. The nearest comparable thing of which I'm aware is Harry Turtledove's "World War/Colonization" series, in which World War 2 is interrupted by an invasion of aliens with advanced technology. In this case, it's advanced technology from our own future. Like Mr. Turtledove, Mr. Birmingham spreads his story over a wide range of characters and situations, with the twist that all the participants in WW2 know of what would have happened and seek to take appropriate action. For example, Heinrich Himmler has all the Führer's future enemies/would-be assassins eliminated, while hushing up his own attempted peace efforts in the dying days of the Third Reich.
The books drag a bit in some parts, but are also often quite exciting, the series reaching its climax for me in the second book with the attempted Nazi invasion of England whose defence is primarily in the hands of the 21st century HMS "Trident" and its part-Pakistani lady captain, whose very existence horrifies the pukka sahibs of the 1940s Royal Navy. Mr. Birmingham brings out well the stark differences in attitudes to colour, gender and sexuality between the two times and how these two worlds exist uncomfortably side by side. The characterisation is not bad, and, again like Mr. Turtledove, Mr. Birmingham has left open the possibility of sequels. If this standard can be maintained, I for one would welcome them.
In conclusion, an entertaining series.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Finished to quickly., 2007-10-11
Waited patiently for this book for 2 years. Started reading it and found it very enjoyable until the last 3rd. The reason for this is I realized in the last third of the book that there was no way the writer would be able to wrap up everything in the pages left. Well he did and I find it was not done too well. He closed out too many story lines way to quickly. I get the feeling he was writing and then realized that he had too many pages and would have to cut the endings/wrap-up short. And he did.
Did I like the book? Yes. Was I let down by the ending? Yes.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
A Fitting Conclusion, 2007-08-16
For anyone who's made it through the first two books this is a fitting conclusion that ties up all the story threads into a satisfying ending. Only thing is this whole series could have made a decent sized single novel. Splitting such stories into a "trilogy" seems to be the new marketing trend. Still, at least it was not three hardcovers.
Really sets up for a 4th book...perhaps a look at the world 20-30 years later and speculated impacts from the technology & culture injection.
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