Curious Notions

Ok, not Turtledoves best effort. The dialogue is simplistic and the characters are even simpler. Good guys are good, bad guys are bad. Adults do not think much. Teenagers think about lots of things. There are quite a few flaws in this work. But realize it is written for a teenager not a mature adult. This does not excuse the flaws in logic of the story line (already mentioned in several other reviews), but it does explain the exchanges between Paul and Lucy. This alternate world is seen from their perspective and Turtledove provides subtle glimpses of the "Home" timeline from Paul's contrasting views of this and his San Francisco. Harry Turtledove does alternate universes better than most and Curious Notions is another good job from the master of parallels. He just should have advertised the youth angle of the book better. I still enjoyed reading it and even knew of the youth audience before hand. It is a quick, simple read that provides another look at a post World War defeated America occupied by Germany. After I finished reading my copy I lent it to another friend who enjoys the SF genre. I was that confident in my recommendation. Sam Hendricks, author of Fantasy Football Guidebook and Fantasy Football Almanac 2009 (available 1 May 2009)

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.

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

As child and young adult - I read my first Heinlein Juvenile when I first learned to read at age 11, it was "Rocketship Galileo" - I devoured each and every one Heinlein Juvenile as I discovered them, and they filled me with a sense of wonder again and again. Then one day, I ran out of Heinlein Juveniles and had to move onto his "adult books". While I throughly enjoyed his adult novels and all of the other adult science fiction I read, I have always had a small, Juvenile sized hole in my reading desires. Now, the Harry Potter series, the Jupiter Books (by Jerry Pournelle, Charles Sheffieldm, et al), and the Alex Rider series have helped me keep this sense of wonder alive, it was firmly rekindled by the Crosstime Traffic series from Harry Turtledove. I read the first Crosstime Traffic book, "Gunpowder Empire" and definitely enjoyed it. It was enough for me to pick-up the second book, "Curious Notions", and I am glad I did! "Curious Notions" was even a better read than "Gunpowder Empire". Written against the background of one of my favorite cities - San Francisco - it asks the question, "What would the world look like if the Kaiser and the German Empire had won World War 1 (yes, you read that right - World War 1, not World War 2)? Through the eyes of our protagonist Paul Gomes (a native of our history) and the co-protagonist Lucy Woo (a native of the alternate history in which the novel takes place), we explore a very different America, San Francisco, and China Town. Paul and Lucy provide strong, capable, and worthy role models for young males and females. I am now much older than when I started reading Heinlein Juveniles, but I still throughly embrace the sense of wonder a good Juvenile book can bring to you. I am so pleased that Hary Turtledove has taken up the mantel of writing excellent Juvenile Science Fiction. I look forward to introducing my children to both Robert Heinlein and Harry Turtledove! If you have a child or young adult who enjoys Science Fiction or Fantasy, then run - don't walk - and purchase "Curious Notions" for them. And if you are lucky, maybe they will let you read it also!

In Curious Notions, the second of his Crosstime Traffic series, Harry Turtledove once again carries on the work of H. Beam Piper (from whom the concept is borrowed) and Robert Heinlein in producing an enjoyable story, aimed primarily at young adults, which will entertain almost anyone interested in science fiction and/or history. Curious Notions is a shop set up by Crosstime Traffic in a San Francisco where Germany won World War I and has dominated the planet for nearly two hundred years. Paul Gomes and his father sell high tech devices from the Home Timeline in order to obtain money to buy produce for their own overcrowded and inflation-plagued version of Earth. Inevitably, the German overlords and the local Chinese-American underworld become curious as to the provenance of the goods on sale at Curious Notions, and the Gomes family is imperiled by not one but two competing sets of bad guys. The story is clearly written without the excessive number of characters and side plots which often weakens a Turtledove book. I found the glimpses of differences between the Home Timeline and the German ruled World fascinating. There are also some interesting moral dilemmas which are satisfactorially worked out. Like Gunpowder Empire (the first Crosstime Traffic Book), Curious Notions is diverting and highly entertaining. I look forward to other installments with bated breath.