Beyond the Shield

With this second edition of the Shield saga we can hope for more to come. Author Dr. Nachman Katazinsky knows a lot about the IDF, as he might well because he served as an officer there as a younger man. He also knows a lot about mid-twentieth century history. That sounds odd to think of those times as history but we cannot deny the march of time.
As with The Shield he has a big extended family to serve as the highway for his wide ranging plot. The family has elements that we find only in science fiction novels. Some of the young twenty somethings are actually the grand parents of the folks nearing retirement age. Family dinners have nuances that those of us in a chronological time stream miss out on. We would like more character development. His characters serve only to accelerate his plot.
And here Dr. Katazinsky excels. We have serious problems-WWII for one-that need to be dealt with by the Israelis blasted into the past. The Israelis must cope not simply with the Nazis and find ways to not just defeat them in the field but to expunge them from history. At the same time Israel must develop ties to other nations in friendly co-operation. I think Dr. Katazinsky has his best moments as a writer when he develops the complex and sensitive relationships between and among nations such as Great Britain, the USSR and an America run by the elietist anti-semite and quite racist FDR. We don't like to think of our longest serving president in those terms but our Russian born author tells truth to a nostalgic past that never existed. Good for him.
And the foundation of the tale remains the high tech accident that blew Israel into the past. More high tech might allow Israel to explore alternet realities. Humm, lots of room there for more adventures.
I ordered this one our as soon as I finished The Shield and I am satisfied with the experience without being overwhelmed. I hope sales are high enough to justify more in the series. I like both books and want more, greedy me.
Another book the readers might enjoy is The Palestine Exchange which deals with a somewhat similar story.

This is the sequel to The Shield. It is good and it wraps up a lot of the hanging storylines the first book. I have a few picky things. First of all, the author skips around a lot. I am thinking that he uses the "various families" and individuals in Israel to illustrate how what happened affected the "average" person. The snippets about the families, after awhile, do become tiresome, because there isn't a lot of "real" story with them. Just excerpts of their lives.

Spoiler alert:

The death of both Stalin and Beria is really glossed over. And the author does not take pains to point out what a monster Stalin is. He does so with Hitler, but for all you know, reading this book, Stalin was someone with a bad temper. In addition there are things that he passes over in a page or less that could take up an entire chapter. The US is more like an after thought and the US is just as bad as GB and France when it comes to Jew Hating. I was a little disappointed in that. But, so what? The author's predictions about Jew Hating have been well illustrated lately.

Too much throw away lines about the "alternate" earths.

Also, for two novels that, literally, rewrite history and, possibly, the future, there is way too little here.

But both books are fascinating, again it took me a day to read the sequel. And as a historian I was impressed with the author's grasp of the politics of the time. One thing, the author mentions Einstein and whether or not he would move to Israel. That was never picked up again, though he does bring Jonas Salk to Israel.

Good book, fascinating premise and interesting. I couldn't put it down.

The basic idea of this book series is not original. John Birmingham did it with Axis of Time, Christopher Nuttall with Second Chance. Especially Christopher Nuttall's series can be seen as the start of the idea behind Shield. Only, in those books the 2010 UK is displaced to July 1940. Here is 21st century Israel displaced to July 1941.
The idea is good, but unfortunately the author got overzealous and the whole plot ended black&white. Israel are basically the good guys, everyone else is bad. Nazis are complete idiots and they are outsmarted everywhere.
Too much time is lost on boring plots like how jews from 1941 accommodate in 21st century Israel and on various business plots that are incredibly unrealistic. As an example, Israel provides British with the plans for building Centurion tanks. Within 3 months, those tanks are built and the are used in Southern France from an invasion force coming from North Africa. Totally unrealistic to believe that the tanks are built and then immediately deployed in large numbers. Let alone training their crews.
Even more anachronistic is the idea that Germans are so fooled that they get it wrong everywhere even abandoning nuclear research for teleportation research. They totally believe everything Mossad does without even bothering to question it.

And near the end the plot looks rushed with lots of loose ends and ideas compiled on a moment notice without any explanations. As an example, there's a high level meeting of generals in Germany, where those generals decide the end the war. Only, many of those generals are also commanding on the fronts, some on Eastern Front some in France. No reason is given to the idea that those generals might leave their command and go to a meeting in Berlin and it would totally escape Gestapo's notice.

All in all, I give the whole 2 book series 2 stars for the effort and for having tried to use a good idea. But the execution was terrible.

I am not commenting anything on jewish supremacy ideas or something like that. Any author is allow a reasonable degree of subjectivity on his ideas.

Good

Loved it. While a few of the ideas stretched credulity (I really didn't buy the Caliph ploy), the story was uplifting and interesting. If there is another one in the series, I will certainly buy it. The geopolitical manipulations were interesting twists to add to the military aspects.

A step down from the less than thrilling first volume. Author groks neither WW2 nor AH. Also the style is jejune.