by Harry Turtledove
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Product Description
In a parallel-world 21st-century San Francisco where the Kaiser's Germany won World War One and went on to dominate the world, Paul Gomes and his father Lawrence are secret agents for our timeline, posing as traders from a foreign land. They run a storefront shop called Curious Notions, selling what is in our world routine consumer technology-record players, radios, cassette decks--all of which is better than anything in this world, but only by a bit. Their real job is to obtain raw materials for our timeline. Just as importantly, they must guard the secret of Crosstime Traffic--for of the millions of parallel timelines, this is one of the few advanced enough to use that secret against us.
Now, however, the German occupation police are harassing them. They want to know where they're getting their mysterious goods. Under pressure, Paul and Lawrence hint that their supplies comes from San Francisco's Chinese...setting in motion a chain of intrigues that will put the entire enterprise of Crosstime Traffic at deadly risk.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Better, but..., 2007-09-07
I started reading this with a bit of trepidation, having been somewhat disappointed with the earlier book in this series, Gunpowder Empires. I was pleasantly surprised that the characters were fleshed out a bit more and the plot had more twists than the first book. Still not up to what I've come to expect from Harry Turtledove, but definitely a step in the right direction. I still feel that this should be classified as juvenile fiction. It was not a disappointing read, just not a satisfying one.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
 Where Do They Come From?, 2006-07-11
Curious Notions (2004) is the second novel in the Crosstime Traffic series, following Gunpowder Empire. Lawrence Gomes is a CT employee living in San Francisco in an alternate timeline where Germany has won the Great War. Paul Gomes is his son. They are storekeepers in the Curious Notions shop where electronic gadgets are sold to get money to buy foodstuffs for the home timeline.
In this novel, Lucy Woo is a Chinese girl who works in a shoe factory in this alternate San Francisco. Charlie Woo, her father, is a radio repairman who knows a lot about the current electronic industry. He has been puzzled over the gadgets sold by Curious Notions for some years.
One morning shortly after Paul and his father took over the store, Inspector Weidenreich dropped in to inspect their identification and business permit. He finds nothing out of order, but questions Paul about their source of supply. Paul denies any knowledge of the buying side of the business and refers the Inspector to his father, who is not in the store at the moment. The Inspector leaves, but promises to come back to see Paul's father.
When Lawrence comes in a few minutes later, he is less than pleased to learn of the Inspector's visit. Paul's Dad pulls several names out of the phone book and, when the Inspector returns, gives him the names as suppliers of the gadgets sold in the shop. Charlie Woo is included in this list. The Germans promptly take in Charlie for questioning.
Lucy Woo is rather angry about the situation and visits Curious Notions to express her opinion. Paul passes on her complaints to his Dad and arrangements are made to release Charlie Woo. Paul continues to see Lucy after that and they have several conversations. However, Paul underestimates Lucy's intelligence and gives her some significant hints about his origins.
In this novel, the Germans continue their investigation of Curious Notions, leading to the apprehension of Paul's Dad. Now Paul is on the run with the entire German empire on this tail (at least it feels this way). Lucy thinks about the clues and comes up with the Crosstime Secret. Everything is really going well . . . Not.
This novel shows another aspect of being an agent for Crosstime Traffic: a sufficiently advanced society is more difficult to fool. Even worse, such a society is probably capable of developing crosstime travel if the secret comes out. Crosstime Traffic has made a major mistake in opening Curious Notions.
Of course, flooding the alternate timeline with perfect counterfeits would be even more disastrous to the Crosstime Secret. Such an operation would require large quantities of small bills, thus making the juxtaposition of two identical bills very likely. Moreover, the transposition device would be fixed in place since the foodstuffs would have to delivered to the homeline. Thus, the Germans probably would soon learn of the counterfeits and would quickly follow the trail back to the device itself. Voila tout, no more Crosstime Secret!
Highly recommended for Turtledove fans and for anyone else for enjoys tales of alternate history and travel thereto.
-Arthur W. Jordin
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Turtledove doesn't give good value, 2006-06-25
I read this book, and I'm unhappy with it. There are gaping logic holes in it. For one thing, the crosstime trading company is supposed to have been in business for some decades now, and have policies set in place. However, they send a teenage boy (just out of high school) and his father on a very critical assignment. Father and son do not work together well, even beyond the normal teen/parent squabbles. True, Turtledove is writing for teenagers, but he should not assume that they are all brainless and senseless (even though some of them are, quite a few are not). The company is portrayed as very efficient, and quite inflexible. It surely would have had protocols in place that would require a junior agent to work in less sensitive areas at first. The father is also borderline incompetent, again, not someone who should be sent on a dangerous and critical assignment. What's more, the reader is told several times that a certain thing cannot be done under any circumstances...but at the end of the book, whoops, it seems that this thing CAN be done after filling out a lot of paperwork.
I was very disappointed in this book. The world/time setting is interesting, and I believe that the plot and character problems could have been avoided quite easily, while still having a very tense atmosphere. It's quite readable, which is why I gave it two stars, but the reader would probably have a much better experience with a Heinlein juvenile, even as dated as they are. Heinlein always put as much thought into his juveniles/YA books as he did in his books intended for adults.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Great Turtledove imagining of alternate histories with some problems, 2006-04-02
In a world where Russia reacted just a little more slowly to the outbreak of war, Germany was able to pump its entire army into France, avoiding the Battle of the Marne and defeating France, England, and Russia in detail to end World War I. Years later, it discovered the atom bomb and defeated and occupied the United States. Now the Crosstime Traffic corporation watches the Germans carefully, and does everything it can to be sure the Germans don't learn the secret of the ability to pass across alternate planes of earth. While it watches, Crosstime trades with this plane, dumping archaic VCRs and other electronic equipment that is completely outdated in the home plane, but fully up-to-date in a world where science has moved a little more slowly (in the absense of cold-war competition).
Teen Paul Gomes and his father take up operation of the San Francisco branch of Crosstime Traffic, buying produce from California's central valley and selling electronics. Although Crosstime hasn't realized it, both the Germans and the Chinese Tongs have noticed that the shop, Curious Notions, sells equipment that is ahead of what even the Germans produce for themselves. They may not guess the crosstime secret, but they certainly suspect something. Paul's father's clumsy attempt to divert German attention to the Chinese gets Lucy Woo's father arrested--and Lucy goes to Paul to complain.
Author Harry Turtledove is at his best realizing alternate history worlds and a world where the Germans prevailed in WWI is certainly not a stretch. A less vibrant, less developed, and less electronically capable San Francisco is a believable outcome of such a war--and the war that followed and allowed Germany to occupy the United States. The economic notion of selling electronic devices retail and buying truckloads of produce is harder to swallow. Why, for example, wouldn't Crosstime have introduced a single product design (say a VCR) and manufactured it locally, selling through distribution (the way VCRs are sold in America today?). Selling through a single retail shop and buying single truckloads of produce seems incredibly inefficient--and exactly the type of thing that would call for attention from curious police.
CURIOUS NOTIONS (and indeed the entire CROSSTIME TRAFFIC series) is targeted largely to the young adult market with its teenage protagonists and the innocent romance between them. Turtledove's strong ability to create and describe alternate worlds, however, will help the series appeal to adult readers as well. A bit more work on the economics and Turtledove will have a definite winner in this series. Even without that, it's an enjoyable story.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 curious notions, 2006-03-20
This will be short but not so sweet. Every once in a while I see a book by Turtledove, pick it up, read the cover and buy it.
When will I learn? Great ideas, poorly concieved story. H.Beam Piper is spinning in his grave. What do you people at TOR have hanging in your closets that you continue to publish Turtledoves garbage.
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