Within this extraordinary World War II alternate history, professional storyteller Harry Turtledove begins using a big change: imagine if Neville Chamberlain, rather than appeasing Hitler, had stood up to him in 1938? Enraged, Hitler reacts by lashing out on the Western, promising his military that they will reach Paris by the new year. They don’t really. Three years afterwards, his genocidal equipment not fully in place, Hitler has barely survived a coup, while Jews cling to success. But Britain and France wonder whether about The Battle That Arrived Early: THE BEST Switch the war is still advantageous.

Weaving together a cast of characters that runs from a brawling American fighter in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain to a female who has seen Hitler’s evil face-to-face, Harry Turtledove uses us right into a world shaping up very differently in 1941. The Germans and their Polish allies have slammed in to the gut from the Soviet Union in the western, while Japan pummels away in the east. In trench warfare in France, French and Czech fighters are outmanned but not outfought by their Nazi foe. Then your stalemate is usually shattered. In England, Winston Churchill dies in an apparent accident, and the gray males who walk behind his funeral cortege question who their genuine foe is usually. The USSR, fighting for its existence, makes serenity with Japan-and Japan’s battle with America is going to begin.

A sweeping saga of human passions, foolishness, and courage, of families and lovers and troops by choice and by chance, The Big Switch is a provocative, gripping, and utterly convincing work of alternate history at its best. For history buffs and supporters of big, blood-and-guts fiction, Harry Turtledove delivers a breathtaking clash of ideals as powerful as armies themselves.