The Great War: American Front, by Harry Turtledove. Well, I decided to give Turtledove another chance, as the first novel I'd ready by him was a mishmash of gratuitous sex, violence, and bad science fiction. Which, you know, might make for a fun beer-and-pretzel novel, unless it's written in a too-dry, academic-historical manner that takes itself too seriously.

Anyway. This novel was better, though less engaging, ironically. It's like a really long docu-drama, and is about as exciting - which fits the topic better, in the end, without cheesy science fiction and pulp-style violence. But as interesting as the topic certainly is (what if the Confederates had won the Civil War - would the South fight the North all over again in WWI? who would become allies? what roles would slaves, Amerindians, and Mormons play?), I'd almost rather have it all in a fictional timeline than in stories of bland characters that seem to all blur together despite their random jumping around.

New X-Men: Academy X Vol. 1 I got this little compilation on Free Comic Book Day, mainly because I couldn't really decide on any of the main X-Men titles. But, I have to say, I was quite pleasantly surprised; the art is great, the writing is pretty light-hearted but not too silly, and it's an interesting expansion of the mutant part of the Marvel setting, in my opinion. From another angle, I prefer Academy X much more than the more serious, but not as interesting, previously run Generation X, I have to say.