The SF book club at Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights met last night. The book under discussion was The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar. It is a book I have been meaning to read for some time, so I’m pleased the club kicked me into doing it.

The general opinion of the club was that it was an interesting read, but perhaps not in the same class as Osama, and not quite up to Kim Newman standard when it came to alternate history. I found it interesting that people seemed to get a lot more out of the book if they didn’t know too much WWII history than if they were steeped in it.

Of course you also got a lot more out of the book if you picked up on all of the comics in-jokes. I guess it is hard for people not to recognize nods to the X-Men given all of the movie coverage they have got, but some people definitely needed the afterword in which some of the characters are explained.

Personally I think I still prefer From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain and Turbulence when it comes to superhero novels, but this was a fine contribution to the sub-genre from Lavie.