The Journey's End has Come at Last

 The longest story ever written has finally reached its end. :(

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Ahoy Kirov Series fans. You've got one last book in the series as the long saga comes to a fitting end.

We asked John about the torment of ending a series of such exceptional length. His response: "It wasn't easy. I knew I had a final battle to be fought against Admiral Kita, but Karpov didn't like his odds in that situation. As I thought about how to end this I realized that I had given the very first book a good ending, never really intending to do a series. Then, I just couldn't stop writing, so I did Cauldron of Fire and Pacific Storm, thinking to make this a "Trilogy." The response from readers was so positive that, even though I thought I had ended the story after volume three, I went ahead and wrote Men of War. It was Karpov that then took hold of things, particularly after the eruption of the Demon Volcano. I just knew what he would do when he finally fell through to 1908, and I just knew that Fedorov would come up with some scheme to go back after him. That led to all the books in the "9 Days Falling" segment, and then I thought I was ending the series with Armageddon, another big climax similar to Karpov's first mutiny aboard Kirov. But series fans just wouldn't let it go. I threw out six new book proposals and asked them where I should go next, and the vote was heavily in support of more Kirov series books. So I launched what became "Season 2--Altered States."

Was it hard to end this?

"Damn hard, and sad too. You have these people in your head for ten years, you dream about them; think about them all day. It's like losing close friends. Though I suppose I could boot up another book involving them any time I wanted, the series itself was long in the tooth. The readership was diminishing, as it was asking a lot for people to stay the course through 64 books, and new readers looking at that journey were easily intimidated. So I decided it was time to do something new. I had squeezed all the wine I could out of that bottle, Kirov, and I wanted to take my muse, and word processor, somewhere else."

Why did you decide to end it with these character based retrospectives?

"I wanted to revisit some of the great moments in the series, and thought that showing how each character stood up in those moments was a nice way to say goodbye to them. Throughout those retrospectives, I continued to weave in the tale of what was happening on Baikal, and on Kirov in 1943 now when Admiral Kita arrives. That became the final task for the ship, and it was a daunting one. So I asked myself, who's going to win this one? Is Kirov going to be sunk here? Are these people all going to die in Part XII? I won't answer those three questions here but it's all in Part XII, I hope readers feel as I did, which is expressed in the ending I chose."

Do we get the remaining mysteries solved? The Seven Keys, the Grand Finality?

"Yes, the mystery of the keys, who made them, and the Kamenski Device are pretty much known by the time they sign on Sir Roger Ames. At the end, the problem of the Grand Finality is revealed too. Along with the fate of the ship and characters. It was something Kirov discovered in Book one, though Fedorov is shocked to learn how that happened. So I had a hard time at the end, like Karpov. I was never one for an easy goodbye. The story ends like things really end in life, not through some contrived plot invention, or stirring climax. Karpov and Fedorov had a job to do in these final missions, and they did it well. Unfortunately, there were some unexpected consequences when Sir Roger asked if he could shift to his time for a look around. I set all that up much earlier in Queen's Gambit.

Are you excited about your new project?

"Of course, but this is a difficult time for me, caught between two worlds, 'one dead, the other powerless to be born.' I'm hoping to build a good readership for my Chronicles of Innisfail, and it has a decided military Fiction bent, just without the tanks and missiles. I call it "Mythic Military Fiction," and I hope some of the series readers take a look with volume one, and help me launch it. .I owe so much to the readers, but I gave a lot too. Producing a book every 60 days was quite a task. But I'll be equally prolific with Innisfail, though I'm not expecting it to be another marathon like the Kirov Series. I've finished book I for that, and just put up the web site pages, with links to all the maps of my new world. Come and see!

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Kirov sails for the Final Sortie

 

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Fans of the long running Kirov Series may have a lump in their throats as Karpov (the younger) takes the ship into the Pacific for what will be the ship's final sortie. His prey? The Imperial Japanese Navy in 1941. Arriving after Pearl Harbor, Fedorov sets the course to intercept the Kido Butai as it returns to Japan. 

Get ready for action, because Karpov is going to lay into the Japanese Navy like Clint Eastwood with a good piece of hickory. The action builds and builds to a climax at the end of Chapter 15, until a problem presents itself.

   Series readers will remember that the Modern Japanese Destroyer Takami emerges from the ash covered Java Sea after Krakatoa erupts, Captain Harada begins interacting with Japanese Generals and Admirals, until he works his way up to a meeting with the legendary Isoroku Yamamoto himself—and some of this interesting interaction is revised here. The remainder of this volume is then every bit as riveting as the first 15 chapters, loaded with naval combat, much of it devoted a long series of engagements between Kirov and Takami as they stalk each other like a pair of Gladiators. Takami has some surprising new capabilities to even things out, but remember, Karpov is in the big Chair aboard Kirov, and can never be underestimated.

The Long Goodbye...

At the conclusion of Volume 6, Sea Lions, Fedorov sustained an injury that would take his life, but Karpov is not willing to let the author write his co-conspirator in Time out of the story just yet. As he has done twice before, he immediately rushes to the Kamenski Device in an effort to get to safe time in the past where Fedorov is whole, healthy and well… But something goes wrong. The Deus es Machina in a box fails to perform as anticipated. Enter Sir Roger Ames for a look under the hood of the Kamenski Device to see if he can identify the problem, which then launches Karpov on a mission to find the one thing they need to get it to work properly again.  This will soon take Baikal back to the lake it is named for.

Season 8 has been a roller coaster ride with a number of twists from the more familiar military fiction into the realms of both horror and pure science fiction. When Karpov’s excursion in search of Kolchak’s Gold led him to a strange hidden railway tunnel near the source of the Angara River we were all transported to what the author calls “Strange far places,” a phrase he quotes from H.P. Lovecraft. Then we got some riveting scenes where a platoon of rangers on patrol along the Stony Tunguska face some of the very same creatures that both Karpov and Fedorov stumbled upon while on opposite ends of Siberia. Fedorov calls the creatures “Raptors” and what can only be called the “Raptor War” begins, reaching its height at the mid-point of the season, in Coming Through. Biology has a good deal to do with the outcome of that conflict, as Baikal moves from one suspected entry point to another, finding and demolishing hidden temporal rifts where the Raptors are coming through to modern years and wreaking considerable havoc. On two occasions, Karpov resorts to heavy handed blows against the Hordes of flying intruders.

Fedorov wants to investigate a strong magnetic anomaly in the Taklamakan desert, which leads to an amazing discovery. Then, trying to clean up loose ends and problems, they decide to hunt down the German raider Kaiser Wilhelm, flying to the deep south Atlantic to stop that ship’s meddling before it can return to Germany with its great nuclear prize in hand. Once again, it is Fedorov’s curiosity that then pulls the mission team further south into Antarctica. The author confesses he has a strange fascination for stories set in polar climes, possibly because he spent three years teaching Eskimos up near the arctic circle in Alaska. This side trip was first presented as a visit to Operation Highjump, which itself is wreathed in its own set of legends and lore. Then the team makes another macabre discovery in a strange far place, and one that will have some rather dire consequences.

The Author has revealed that Sir Roger Ames is a man from the future, and then uses him to make other revelations about the thing Fedorov’s team finds in the ice caverns of Antarctica. It is certainly not to be mistaken for anything that evolved on this earth, like the Raptors. This time the story goes full on X-Files and Sir Roger, using his knowledge from the future, explains that if earth is visited by alien species some might be benign, others not so benign. Using a metaphor, he characterizes the specimen Fedorov has discovered in Antarctica as the “Murder Hornets” where Alien species are concerned. And the team soon learns that their discovery could be quite dangerous, not only to the mission crew, but to the planet as a whole.

Their decision to return to Antarctica and settle the matter seems to tamp things down, but the author has told us that plot line is not yet tied off. Now we move on to the seventh book in this season, The Final Sortie, where the author largely stays with the ship and crew as Karpov stalks the Imperial Japanese Navy in the early days of the Pacific War in 1941-42, and raises hell. The action builds and builds to a climax at the end of Chapter 15, until  the arrival of the modern Japanese Destroyer Takami, which then sets off another series of battles against that ship.

At the end, Fedorov confronts another mystery that haunts him from the days of the endless fog the ship was once marooned in—something that effects the fate lines of Volsky, Orlov and others. The cliff hanger here is the coming of Admiral Kita, arriving early at Enewetok through the rift created by the US post-war Ivy Mike detonation. That rift extended deep into the past, and delivers a powerful modern day Japanese task force to the scene, one even stronger than what we saw earlier in the series. Is this the nemesis the author will use to seal Kirov’s fate?  We’ll just have to wait for that last volume coming the first quarter of 2022. Brothers, after ten years with this story, it will be a sad day when it ends with the Series Finale in the final book, appropriately entitled Journey's End. That said, the author has included an announcement at the end of this book for a new series he is launching in 2022, something altogether different that I’m now really looking forward to. The first Volume of that new tale is already complete, and John is working on the web site while he finishes Journey's end. Its in an entirely different genre.

For now, hop aboard Kirov for the Final Sortie. This one builds up at the end to what will likely be the last missiles to be fired by the ship and crew. The Series Finale, Journey's End is going to focus heavily on all the main characters, as each one's fate line is tied off, one by one. If you were there at the beginning, you'll definitely want to be there for the ending in these last two volumes. So join our 'Wanderers in eternity' and walk that missile deck once again, but be ready when the claxon sounds!

 

Kirov Saga #63

The Final Sortie 

By

John Schettler

 

Part I – Catch-22

Part II – Wading In

Part III – Karpov’s War

Part IV – Hara’s Dilemma

Part V – Moskit#10

Part VI – Bloodhounds

Part VII – Shadow Thread

Part VIII– Strange Bedfellows

Part IX – Gladiators

Part X – Devil in the Banda Sea

Part XI – The Marathon

Part XII – Homeward Bound

KIROV SERIES AUDIOBOOK PROJECT

We're making history (our way)!

JOIN US

Perhaps the closest we will ever get to a movie version of Kirov will be a professional audio book project, and this is now on the radar screen. The expense required to do it right, hiring enough voice talent to bring the characters to life, has prompted us to see if readers might support this project through a “Go Fund Me” campaign to offer the first three volumes of the Kirov Series  as audiobooks. We’re trying to raise $25,000 to do this, and here are the different levels where you can contribute to help make the project a reality.

Support us at the $20 level as a way to say “Thanks” to the author for delivering 40 volumes of this incredible series with such dedication, and also get a sales code that will deliver a free kindle version of a coming book from the final season of the series.

Support us at the $50 level and receive any single volume of the Kirov Series you designate as a book, personally autographed by the author.

Support us at the $100 level and receive a free copy of one  finished audiobook in either digital or CD format, and an autographed copy of that same novel in book form.

Support us at the $200 level and receive the opening trilogy of the  Series as finished audio books when complete, including all three autographed paperbacks.

Support us at the $500 level and receive all three audiobooks as above and also any single 8 volume season of the Kirov Series as paperbacks signed by the author.

Support us at the $1000 level and receive all three audiobooks and also the entire first 40 volumes of the Kirov Series, with each one autographed by the author.

TO DONATE and SUPPORT THE PROJECT :
https://www.gofundme.com/kirov-series-audiobook-project

Breakout

Kirov Series - Volume 38

Breakout

London endures a mass raid by the combined airship fleets of Orenburg and Germany, with a witches’ brew of deadly new weapons to avenge the firebombing of Hamburg.     Patton and Bradley supercharge Operation Thunder with a massive bombardment to break the German line, and all hell break loose on the Western Front. Desperate to save the 7th Army, von Rundstedt and Guderian order a withdrawal to the Seine, and the race is on as Patton drives for a bridgehead at Rouen. When the battle heats up, the US Armored Captains are stunned by the arrival of a deadly new German heavy tank, and a brigade that moves like lightning in the storm of fire and steel.   As the Allies drive to stop the German V-1s in the Pas-de-Calais, a sudden breakthrough opens to gateway to one of Europe’s largest deep water ports, Antwerp. A daring plan is now devised to seize the port with thunderclap surprise. Meanwhile, Fedorov and Karpov are storm hunting when they have a chance encounter with an old enemy in the skies over the Norwegian Sea. Now they strive to stop a deadly enemy attack on the eastern seaboard, and prevent the imminent destruction of New York.

MORE INFO HERE

Kirov Saga: 38

Breakout

By
John Schettler

Part I – Aldersturm
Part II – Operation Thunder
Part III – Hercules
Part IV – The Second Labor
Part V – Resurrection
Part VI – Relentless
Part VII – Robbing Peter
Part VIII– Breakthroughs
Part IX – Soldier On
Part X – History’s Shadow
Part XI – Chance Encounters
Part XII – Flies in the Ointment

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Stormy Weather...

Kirov Series: Volume 37 

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The Tempest

    
The war in 1944 heats up as the tempest of Allied offensive operations rages on three fronts.

In Russia, Sergei Kirov turns the wrath of his powerful Red Army to the east, vowing to destroy Ivan Volkov’s Orenburg Federation once and for all after the dastardly attack on Leningrad. In the Pacific, Admiral Spruance leads in the Big Blue Fleet to begin Operation Forager in the Marianas. It leads to the great carrier duel in the Philippine Sea and the landings on Saipan, Tinian and Guam against a determined and desperate enemy. In the West, Operation Overlord is finally cast ashore, but the old familiar battle in Normandy is forsaken for a new campaign, this time in the Pas-de-Calais. The battle for France soon becomes the most dangerous theater of the war, as Patton joins the action again with Operation Thunder in the south. At the height of the crisis, a train makes its way from the heart of the Reich, heading south and west to the German border, but with a most unusual cargo, and the word ‘Wunderwaffe’ is given new meaning on the Western Front.
    As the Germans struggle to head off a power struggle and civil war after the death of the Führer, two dramatic meetings are held to decide the fate of the Axis powers. The first is the long-planned meeting in the Eagle’s Nest, where the Generals of OKW face down Himmler and Goring to define a new chain of command for Germany. The second is a secret meeting between Ivan Volkov and Himmler, where the two men plot how best to use the one clear advantage they now possess in the grim struggle ahead, the fire of the atomic bomb. But first, Volkov proposes a bold new plan aimed at stopping the devastating Allied bombing offensive over Germany.
    Finally, the outcome of the mission launched by Fedorov and Karpov aboard Tunguska meets with an unexpected complication. Time seems to conspire against them, and Karpov suddenly realizes that the solution to the problem they are trying to solve lies somewhere else. Now the two men are forced to reorient their thinking about the dilemma they face, and plan a final solution to the terrible crisis of their own making.

 Buy now for Amazon Kindle: $4.99  
 

Kirov Saga: 37
The Tempest

By
John Schettler

Part I – The Devil’s Adjutants
Part II – The Führer’s Shadow
Part III – Kantai-Kessen
Part IV – The Seven Samurai
Part V – Saipan
Part VI – Death Before Dishonor
Part VII – Devil’s Bargain
Part VIII– Controlled Chaos
Part IX – The Far Shore
Part X – The Train
Part XI – The Other Foot
Part XII – Absolute Certainty
   
324 Pages, 36 Chapters, about 105,000 words.
Kindle Version: $4.99 ~ Quality Trade Paperback: $19.99

"Beware the Ides of March..."

Kirov Series: Volume 36

1944

  Vladimir Karpov takes his private war to the Marianas, and meets Admiral Kita’s Task Force head on as the mighty Kirov once again joins the action in the Pacific.
 
The Allied Generals meet to decide their strategy, and the fate of Operation Overlord hangs in the balance. Then the war in the West takes a dramatic turn when Rommel and Guderian launch their bid to isolate and destroy Patton’s 7th Army in Operation Valkyrie. The battle that results rapidly redraws the lines on the war maps, and threatens to decide the outcome in the West. As the fiery General Patton commits everything to hold his position, he then launches a stunning counterattack, but in a most unexpected direction.

  As Manstein makes his dramatic withdrawal to the Dnieper, the shifting loyalties of Ivan Volkov take him to a dangerous meeting in Leningrad with Sergei Kirov. There he makes his final bid for a cease fire and peace terms with the Soviet Union, and a startling offer that becomes much more than it seems.

AVAILABLE NOW!

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Here There Be Dragons...

Kirov Series #35

Dragonfall

NOTE: This was originally titled "1944" but as all the action here occurs in late 1943, that title is now reserved for the next book, Volume 36.

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About Dragonfall

Here comes the next volume of the long running Kirov Series, and right on schedule, only it has been retitled Dragonfall. The title it releases, 1944, will instead become volume 36, and largely because this action packed book needed all its chapters to finish off 1943.

We begin with a welcome return to the battlecruiser Kirov. With the Siberian off with Fedorov aboard Tunguska on their mission to get after Tyrenkov, the younger Karpov has taken command of our favorite ship, and his restless energy soon leads to battle. Eager to get the war moving against the Japanese, he decides to first clear up a logistical problem he had in supplying Petropavlovsk, the major port on the southeast coast of Kamchatka, taken earlier in the war. It can only be supplied by landing on the west coast, and hauling supplies over the rugged terrain of Kamchatka, so Karpov wants to open a sea lane through the 1st Kurile Strait.

The problem thee is the de-facto Japanese occupation of Shumushu and Paramushiro, two islands just off the southern tip of Kamchatka. Artillery, air units and naval units make any convoy through that strait a near suicide mission, and Karpov sees the only solution—assault and occupy those islands to clear the sea lane. This sets up the opening three chapters, as the mighty Kirov leads the Siberian offensive to accomplish this task.

Part II then takes up to the US strategy in the south Pacific. MacArthur wants Tulagi, but Nimitz wants to continue into the Marshalls. They will both get what they want, for the US finds itself strong enough to mount both offensives simultaneously. Yet the Combined Fleet has also reached its high water mark. Admiral Kita pledges his 21st century task force to serve Yamamoto’s needs, and they plan to go gunning for the US carriers. Enter Vladimir Karpov, and Kirov is back again by Part III, aptly entitled “Ambush.” Those next three chapters again bring Kirov and Kazan into direct confrontation with Admiral Kita and company, and the missiles and fireworks fly.

The next nine chapters take us to the East Front, for the onset of the Soviet Winter offensive. It has to major aims this time around, the capture of Kharkov in the south, and then the isolation of all German forces stubbornly defending at Moscow. Sergei Kirov wants his cities back. In all this action, we now see what the Soviet army has become capable of, and how the German situation grows ever more desperate in the East. The fortunes of some German Generals falter and fail, while others rise to take their place in the intense fighting that characterizes these nine chapters.

Part VII, “All Hallows Eve” then takes us to Southern France to relate what the Allies are doing there in their last big offensive of 1943. Beginning in late October, the action rages into late November with drives by Patton, Clark, O’Connor, and Montgomery all complicating Rommel’s defense, which struggles desperately to hold back the Allied surge. The action finally shocks Hitler into seeing the gravity of the threat now posed by the US and British forces in France.

After this brief three chapter roundup on action in the West, we then return to the Pacific. The title of this volume is derived from this action, for a full 16 of the 36 chapters in the book deal with battles in the Pacific, and Kirov is right in the middle of things. Yamamoto throws the Kido-Butai at the US Navy, intending to counterattack through the Solomon Sea towards Tulagi, which is Bull Halsey’s watch. At the same time, Nagumo sets out to see if he can stop Nimitz in the Marshalls, which is soon seen as the more immediate threat by Yamamoto. He decides to reinforce Nagumo at the expense of Hara’s operation in the Solomons, and two big carrier actions result as the resurgent Kido-Butai meets the ever strengthening power of the US fast carrier task forces under Spruance, Mitscher, Fletcher and Ziggy Sprague.

I won’t tell you which dragon gets slain, but its right in line with all the great Pacific battles we’ve see thus far. After this segment concludes in Chapter 31, the book the reserves the last five chapters for Fedorov and the Siberian Karpov’s mission against Tyrenkov, which has taken a strange twist when the airship arrives just hours before the event it is named after. This segment takes up right where it left off at the conclusion of Event Horizon, and drives that plot line forward, with all its many ramifications and consequences involving the viability of the altered states we have been living in for so long.

Ending with a recap of all the great action of 1943, this volume concludes on New Year’s Eve of that year, and we are now poised to enter the decisive year that will entitle the next volume, 1944. This compelling and detailed alternate history of the war drives faithfully on, and now we’re entering territory that will feature some of the most colorful and interesting battles of the war. The Allies are still planning a cross channel attack. The heavy bombers may lead off a major breakout operation in France akin to Operation Cobra. There may be a big airborne operation like Market Garden in the offing. The US may blunder into the nightmare that was Hurtgen Forest. Hitler will most certainly risk everything in one more counterattack like the Battle of the Bulge. The U.S. will surely go for the Marianas at Saipan and Tinian soon, even while MacArthur hastens to invade New Georgia so he can break the Bismarck Barrier and be in a position to return to his cherished Philippines. And oh yes, Georgie Zhukov will have his mind set on crossing the Dnieper.

I’ll be there!

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Season 5 Premier

Kirov Series: PRIME MERIDIAN

Available Now

Season Five Begins with Prime Meridian

    The War in the West takes a dangerous step forward when Churchill orders a dramatic retaliatory strike on Germany. Even as plans are laid for the invasion of Italy, Marshall and Eisenhower now steer the course of the campaign in a bold new direction. But first, the last of the German fleet in the Med must be challenged at sea. In the battle that follows, the German battlecruiser Kaiser Wilhelm soon finds itself grappling with a mystery, and strange new foes on the high seas.
       Meanwhile, Gennadi Orlov makes a most fateful decision and sets out to find Ivan Volkov in 1908. He is joined by a most unexpected visitor, but they soon find that they are not the only ones in the hunt, and events in the crucial year of 1908 now threaten to spiral out of control.
      The Fairchild group continues its quest for the lost key, even as the Meridian Project team detects the onset of a dangerous wave of utter annihilation in the distant future that threatens the integrity of Time itself.

  The Grand Finality they have long feared begins to cast its ever deepening shadow, and the fate of the Prime Meridian is now in grave jeopardy.

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MORE ABOUT PRIME MERIDIAN

    After being upstaged by Sir Roger Ames in the marvelous retelling of the Waterloo Campaign,Field of Glory, Season 5 now begins with Prime Meridian. Like the Season 4 Premier, Doppelganger, the book’s striking cover hints strongly that this volume will take us deeper into the mysteries, and consequences, of time travel, which has always been at the heart of the series itself. Readers know that ‘nothing is written,’ nothing ever certain, and ‘everything is permitted, ‘as the old Ismali saying goes. In Prime Meridian, several missions into the past now present us with some startling twists, and grave consequences.

    Even as the war continues, with the Allies now poised to make their invasion of Italy, the Germans must decide how and where to defend. Kesselring argues strongly that the key ports and airfield complexes in the south should be defended, while Rommel holds that everything should simply be pulled back to the Apennine Range and only the Po Valley should be held. At the same time, the Allies are dickering over any number of options now open to them after the fall of Corsica. Churchill proposes a daring move into the Balkans, Montgomery prefers his historical “Heel and Toe” operations, and with Sardinia in hand, now Allied air power can easily cover a thrust aimed directly at Rome. The plan that is finally chosen is, however, most unexpected, a conspiracy born of collusion between Eisenhower and General Marshall.

    Yet everything these men grapple with pales before the dilemma now facing Fedorov and company. A triumvirate of our local heroes, Volsky, Fedorov, and Karpov (the Siberian), finally agree on an attempt to eliminate Ivan Volkov to prevent the rise of the Orenburg Federation. Yet their plans are complicated by the great loose cannon in the story, one Gennadi Orlov. Separated from Fedorov’s team on their last mission to Ilanskiy, Orlov has remained behind in 1908. Now he makes a fateful choice when he detects another modern day naval service jacket signal, and realizes who it must be.

    Orlov has always been a wild card in the deck of the main series characters on the battlecruiser Kirov. His bumbling about, impulsive decisions, strange finds on the tundra of Siberia, have always introduced some of the major plot twists of the series, and that will certainly be the case again here. First, Orlov finds he is not alone as he sets off to hunt down Ivan Volkov. The plan hatched by Fedorov and company is now about to undergo a convulsive twist, and the implications are more threatening to the integrity of the history than anything that has yet happened in the series.

    Meanwhile, the Meridian Project cannot fail to notice what is happening from the vantage point of the Berkeley Lab facility in 2021. With war imminent, their Golem monitors now present a startling series of variations originating from 1908 and migrating all along the continuum, to their present. As all the series character sets slowly come to the same realizations about what is happening, the author uses the Meridian Team to explain all the time theory behind this development and make it more graspable. The striking cover illustrates this as well, though you won’t find out what the Hindu statue means until very near the end of this one. It’s an amazing synthesis of the author’s entire universe of writing, all blooming now in the middle of this marathon retelling of the history of WWII.

    Ever since the arrival of physicist Paul Dorland, reprising his role as Lieutenant Commander Wellings from the final book in the author’s Meridian time travel series, he and his project team of four intrepid researchers have made occasional cameo appearances in the story. We last saw them take notice of a new historical variation cause by Sir Roger Ames in Field of Glory. In fact, they even attempted to prevent his intervention there, but he was able to slip away on the eve of Waterloo, which led to that excellent retelling of the entire campaign. The time travel, while often brought keenly into focus, is always just a vehicle for the author to take us into some corner of the history where he has undoubtedly spent a long time grazing. Field of Glory is now as one of the most outstanding alternate history books ever penned, and as volume 1 in the Keyholder’s Saga, we get the promise of more to come in that series. In Prime Meridian, Dorland and his team appear again, getting about three full chapters near the end of this volume, largely used by the author to explain the consequences of things the other characters are doing, and to advance the mystery around the formation of that Grand Finality Elena Fairchild was warning about.

    Yet in spite of the cover emphasizing the time travel aspects of the story, this book is mostly focused on the history. The first 15 chapters all continue the evolving war in the West. Then we get a clever an interesting diversion in Part VI, where the author takes us on a little journey with the Russian Baltic fleet enroute to its fated appointment in the Tsushima Straits. That little incident makes a clever back-stitch to those events, which were echoed when Karpov arrived in 1908 with Kirov, deciding to reset the history in Russia’s favor. We all saw how that turned out. That segment sets up another intriguing loop involving the strange talisman Orlov discovered in Siberia, the Devil’s Teardrop. Then we get that seeming diversion stitched right back into the main story line where the German raider Kaiser Wilhelm has again broken off from Raeder’s task force. As before, mischief and mayhem lie dead ahead.

    All in all, Prime Meridian launches Season 5 quite well. We get new beginnings, echoes of past segments in the series, lines drawn to connect some of the many subplots, and at the end of this one, a terrifying twist that few will likely expect. Ahead lies the remaining months of 1943, and then the decisive year of 1944 in this long retelling of the war…. Assuming the time line holds together long enough for the author to write it all. Something tells me it will, as Mr. Schettler has, on more than one occasion, vowed that he would take the series all the way to the end of the war.

    And we get to take that wonderful ride!
    Look for Prime Meridian coming October 1, and welcome to Season 5.

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Kirov Saga: Nexus Deep

Book 31 in the Kirov Series
NEXUS DEEP
By John Schettler

ABOUT NEXUS DEEP

Volume 31 is right on schedule, and Nexus Deep opens with Admiral Cunningham aboard HMS Nelson as that lumbering battleship heads out to sea from Alexandria. Big things are soon to be afoot in the Mediterranean theater, but the author then makes a most unexpected transition to the famous Admiral that battleship was named for, Nelson himself aboard HMS Victory, in the year 1805. No, there was no time travel for the old WWII battlewagon, but it is a very clever opening that foreshadows a lot that happens in this book.

Old Lord Nelson becomes important for a couple reasons. The first we get an interesting look into the Admiral’s mind through his letters to the Admiralty, and orders to various ships, (one of which becomes very important.)  The author presents his view of what is most strategically important about the British situation in the Med. Is it Gibraltar? Malta? Not at all. Keep that in mind, for it will bear on decisions made by other Admirals and General over 140 years later, as the Allies close in on Tunis and Bizerte with a final grand offensive in Tunisia that aims at ending the war in North Africa.

If they do win through in Tunisia, where will they go next? That was the question settled at the Casablanca conference, but the outcome will be quite different here when Marshall, Brooke and all the Generals and Admirals get together. While Sicily is the obvious next target, the words of Lord Nelson echo through the history, and one would do well to heed them. Here they come on the lips of Admiral Tovey, who weighs in with his opinion from the naval perspective, much to Montgomery’s chagrin. The Tee-totaling British General is all set to tee up his familiar plan for the invasion of Sicily, but the fact that Malta remains in German hands presents a problem that the conference must now work out.

The result of their decisions is played out here before this novel ends, but there is a lot more going on, and some of it has to do with a Deep Nexus Point that has yawned open at the very outset of this volume.Elena Fairchild is now ready to launch her mission into the deeps of St. Michael’s Cave beneath the Rock, and that little adventure suddenly presents her intrepid team with the prospect of paradox. Intelligence Chief Mack Morgan plays the Devil’s Advocate as they work through the mission planning, but the real devilry happens later when this inkling of paradox emerges once the mission has already been launched. This plot line has been foreshadowed many times, and indeed, Fairchild got the idea for the mission from one Professor Dorland, long ago at the Azores conference. There, the time sleuthing Physics Professor (a primary character in the author’s Meridian Series time travel novels) makes his cameo appearances in the Kirov Series disguised as Lieutenant Commander  Wellings. Remember all that foreboding discussion about Paradox, Gordian knots and Grand Finalities? That shadow is again rising in the background as Fairchild is dead set on retrieving the key lost on Nelson’s sister ship, HMS Rodney.

These events in the Med serve as bookends for this novel, and in the center, the big battles on the Eastern Front are again taking center stage. The cover tells the story well enough for as it prominently features Field Marshal Manstein beneath a Panther Tank overlaid on a faded map of the German Kursk Offensive, Operation Zitadelle. Three plans are considered, Habicht (Hawk), Panther (an expanded version of Habicht), and the historical Zitadelle. Manstein argues strongly for the former, but as always, Hitler gets the last say.

Launched a month early in June of 1943, the German attack aims at regaining the momentum lost to the Soviets during the long defensive struggle against Operation Red Star. Manstein’s “Backhand Blow” was able to halt the enemy offensive, ending with the bitter  and costly battle of Volkov Yar, but while Belgorod was recaptured, the line of the Psel river that was once anchored on Oboyan was never restored. Now Hitler wants that lost terrain back, and he chooses the operation most likely to deliver the goods, and then some. His eyes are again set on a distant political target—you guessed it—Kursk in Operation Zitadelle.

One of the most interesting elements of these novels is the detailed depiction of the decision making on either side. All the key players meet and hash out the plans which will then be presented in the action/battle sequences dead ahead. As the operations proceed, both east and west, you can just feel the palpable turning point in the war playing itself out in this novel. We saw one such event in the Season 3 novel by that same name, Turning Point, and it changed the course of the war in North Africa. This time, the Germans finally reach high tide in Russia, and the dangerous receding ebb tides of mid to late 1943 lie dead ahead. Manstein’s inner muse is heavy with the realization that something has changed. The year that began with grand offensives into the Middle East and deep into Iraq, has now transitioned into a series of desperate holding actions. Both the Soviets and Allied Western forces are now formidable opponents, and the tension in this taut mid-point of the war is apparent on every front. The outcome of the battles presented here will be decisive.

Once it seemed that Germany was invincible, and on her way to a dramatic alternate history victory in WWII. The Führer had stormed into Poland, France, and then added Spain to his new European Empire, seizing Gibraltar and then moving on into Morocco and the Canary Islands. The Soviets were driven back with heavy losses to Moscow, and watched that city burn in that exciting action from 1941 when Sergei Kirov was rescued by his intelligence master, Berzin, and fled to Leningrad. The Japanese avoided Midway, and then landed on Fiji in the Pacific, while also storming Ceylon in the Indian Ocean. Then we saw Rommel and Guderian run wild in the Middle East and Syria, taking Damascus and Baghdad. It seemed that the Axis powers were surely on the road to Victory. Hitler even had a pair of working prototypes for a ballistic missile, complete with atomic warheads! (And by God, he’s already used one on London.) But things change....

As the novel bends toward its conclusion, Part XI returns us to the Fairchild mission, and a wonderful historical vignette that deepens the mystery of the Keyholders plot line. It seems that the man responsible for the fact that the key aboard Rodney ever got there in the first place, Lord Elgin, also had a son who undertook a most curious mission. This segment Curious Marbles is most riveting, and after twisting another clue into the narrative, the author then brings us to the final segment of this offering, aptly entitled Balance of Terror. The Allies know Hitler has the bomb, and even as they lay their plans for mid-1943, the shadow of that weapon hangs heavily on them all. Churchill comes up with a plan, and uses Tovey to make a most unexpected request of our heroes aboard the mighty Kirov. While they have receded in recent volumes, they nonetheless make appearances here, stage left and stage right, because their mission to 1908 is also gathering momentum. And then… oh yes… there is Orlov. We learn just where the Chief ended up, and what he does next will make all the difference in the world... in many worlds.

Need I say more?

Kirov Saga:
Nexus Deep

By
John Schettler

Part I – Minerva’s Curse
Part II – Operation Chariot
Part III – Time is Money
Part IV – Zitadelle
Part V – Rumyantsev
Part VI – Confrontation
Part VII – One Small Step
Part VIII– The Road to Taranovka
Part IX – Twenty Divisions
Part X – Collapse
Part XI – Curious Marbles
Part XII – Balance of Terror

36 Chapters, about 106,000 words 

PUBLISHER's NOTE:

The initial upload of the Kindle file during publication did not have the table of contents hyperlinked, and this will be corrected by 6/30/17.

Ironfall

Kirov Series: Book 30

Ironfall

The war continues in 1943, as Japan launches a bold new attack against the Fiji Islands that leads to a decisive battle off Yasawa. In Syria, Erwin Rommel unleashes a classic flanking attack towards Damascus with “Operation Eisenfall,” even as the Allies attack Kesselring in Tunisia with Eisenhower’s “Operation Hammer.”

   Then, as the German 11th and 17th Armies slowly grind down the last of Soviet resistance in the Caucasus, tensions reach a breaking point when they meet Volkov’s forces dug in west of Maykop. The Führer has ordered his legions to take and occupy that place, and Ivan Volkov chooses to stand his ground. The war in the east now threatens to spiral out of control, with new fighting erupting on every frontier when General Zhukov opens his Spring offensive in a massive attack towards Kharkov that now threatens to reshape the entire front.

   Meanwhile, Elena Fairchild finally learns the fate of the men she sent into the hidden passage beneath St. Michael’s Cave, and makes a discovery that will give her the means to find and retrieve the key  lost on the Battleship Rodney. As she plans her mission, Fedorov and Karpov arrange a meeting with Volsky and Gromyko to discuss their new plan to shatter this altered meridian by traveling to 1908.

READ MORE ABOUT IRONFALL HERE

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Kirov Series: Stormtide Rising!

Season four continues with Stormtide Rising!
    Book 29 in the Kirov Series

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Trade Paperback: $19.99

With the Allied forces closing on Tunisia from two sides, the Germans conceive a bold new plan that sends Rommel west to the heartland of Tunisia where he confronts the American Army under General Patton. The Axis forces launch Operation Sturmflut (Stormtide) as the famous names etched in the original history at Kasserine, Faid, Gafsa and El Guettar will again see the rising tide of war.

At the same time, Hitler presses his daring invasion of Iraq and Syria in Operation Phoenix, while launching the cream of his airborne troops against the British outpost on Crete with a much belated Operation Merkur. As Guderian pushes into the heartland of Persia, Hitler sets his eyes on the richest prize in the world—all the oil the Reich will ever need to fuel the fires of war. Yet before Guderian can drive south, he must first secure his lines of communication. That necessity leads to a dramatic battle for the ancient capital city of Baghdad, with both sides risking all they have to rule the hour. Meanwhile, Fedorov and Karpov face the grim reality of their situation and come to a decisive conclusion about how they must proceed.

  Kirov Saga:
    Stormtide Rising!

By
John Schettler

Part I – The Last Dance
Part II – Sturmflut
Part III – Swan Song
Part IV – Victoria Park
Part V – Steel Veins
Part VI – Quicksilver
Part VII – Baghdad
Part VIII– Bridges to Nowhere
Part IX – Sea Change
Part X – Harbinger
Part XI – Turncoat
Part XII – Quantum Karma