{"id":185,"date":"2012-01-13T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=185"},"modified":"2022-11-25T10:18:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-25T16:18:14","slug":"valley-westside-war-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=185","title":{"rendered":"Who started THE VALLEY-WESTSIDE WAR? by Harry Turtledove (YA book review)"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>In 1967,
\nduring “the Summer of Love<\/a>,”
\nsomeone dropped the Bomb<\/a> and began nuclear holocaust…<\/div>\n

Why did it happen in one time-continuum and not the others? What made this time-stream different? If Crosstime Traffic seals off this alternate, will if prevent this blight from spreading to others where they trade undercover for resources?<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s all about the money for Crosstime Traffic; researchers are allowed to travel to alternate time-streams if there’s a potential commercial advantage<\/a> for the corporation.<\/p>\n

That’s why Liz is spending her gap year between high school and college with her scientist parents in this fragmented L.A. time-stream, with its hippie-talk<\/a> lingo and scavenged technology. But can she hide her intellect well enough to pass for a young woman of this era during a war between neighborhoods?<\/p>\n

You can read the six Crosstime Traffic books in any order, as there are different teens traveling the alternate time-streams in each. The Disunited States of America<\/i> (review<\/a>) never saw the Constitution signed – alternate history<\/a> is an interesting and dangerous place!
\n**kmm<\/p>\n

Book info<\/b>: The Valley-Westside War (Crosstime Traffic #6) \/ Harry Turtledove. Tor Books, 2008 (paperback, 2009). [author’s website<\/a>] [publisher site<\/a>] Personal copy; cover image courtesy of publisher.<\/p>\n

My Recommendation<\/b>: Nuclear bombs shattered the US in 1967, leaving pockets of survivors and halting technology development \u2013 on this parallel timeline. Sent there by Crosstime Traffic, Liz and her parents pose as traders as they try to discover why this Los Angeles is still a patchwork of neighborhood kingdoms at war with one another 100 years later.<\/p>\n

In the nearly abandoned UCLA library lit by oil lanterns, Liz scans crumbling magazines and newspapers with her hidden data device, hunting for the war\u2019s trigger point. She can\u2019t visit the library too often, as women here are expected to run the household and stay quiet \u2013 women\u2019s liberation never even got started before someone fired the first deadly missiles. Good thing she\u2019ll be at the real UCLA in the home timeline in just a year, instead of fetching water from cisterns during the ongoing drought.<\/p>\n

When the Westside City Council decides to charge a toll for wagons coming through Sepulveda Pass on the old highway, King Zev of the Valley declares war. So it\u2019ll be arrows and knives in hand-to-hand combat, as usual \u2013 except someone has found an Old Time machine gun and made it work. As killing from a distance becomes possible for the first time in decades, the stakes are much higher for Dan and the other soldiers.<\/p>\n

A chance meeting between Liz and Dan may put both their missions in jeopardy, as Dan invents reasons to visit the Mendoza hacienda in enemy territory so he can talk to her again. It\u2019s hard to transmit data reports to the home timeline when Liz doesn\u2019t know when Dan might show up. He is nice to talk to and look at, of course.<\/p>\n

As long as the Mendozas act like regular traders and the locals don\u2019t suspect there\u2019s a time station hidden in their hacienda\u2019s basement, everything will be fine\u2026 right?<\/p>\n

Turtledove brings readers into another alternate strand of history with this exciting episode of the Crosstime Traffic series, asking \u201cwhat if?\u201d a single event could change everything we know. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1967, during “the Summer of Love,” someone dropped the Bomb and began nuclear holocaust… Why did it happen in one time-continuum and not the others? What made this time-stream different? If Crosstime Traffic seals off this alternate, will if prevent this blight from spreading to others where they trade undercover for resources? Yes, it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,19,68,62],"tags":[105,20,5,118,66,119,8,59],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alternate-history","category-fiction","category-future","category-science-fiction","tag-california","tag-conflict","tag-coping","tag-economics","tag-series","tag-time-travel","tag-us-author","tag-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13248,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/13248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}