Turtledove is a master of alternate history, of what-if that always kept me reading. I think this is his most crude as the what-if is "AIDS in the XVI century".
The author spares no details in how some people were playing with their life, women were segregated and the castity was the main way to avoid the illness.
It's an intriguing story, disturbing at times, with some surprising twists.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Before reading this book, I had always enjoyed Harry Turtledove’s alternative history novels, which have a sci fi vibe and usually a good dose of humor, sometimes of the laugh out loud variety. When I saw that this one was available, I leapt on it. What a freaking disappointment!

Nevertheless, my thanks go to NetGalley and ARC Manor Publishing for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The premise is that HIV—renamed The Wasting-- erupts in the early 1500s, but instead of dismissing it as a disease spread by gay men, English society sequesters its women in the home, never to be permitted friends or visitors, never allowed to go out and do their own shopping without extreme cloaking of bodies and faces, and extreme risk for committing the social sin of venturing out of the house. Viola is supposedly our protagonist, a young, intelligent woman of marriageable age who fumes under her constraints and entertains herself by reading her physician father’s collection of medical books.

Peter, whom we actually see a good deal more of, is the young man that the parents have arranged to marry Viola. The two of them are permitted to meet (in Viola’s home of course) in order to determine whether they are compatible. They are. Now Peter is off to university, and for the most part, we go with him.

Immediately we meet Peter’s obnoxious, wealthy roommate, who is masturbating when we encounter him. Turns out this guy never thinks of anything except sex. Peter is determined to wait for marriage because of the Wasting. There’s no treatment and there’s no cure; he doesn’t want it, and he doesn’t want to give it to Viola. His roommate, however, frequents brothels on an almost nightly basis and talks about it, graphically, interminably. Think of every vulgar, disgusting, disrespectful term you don’t want to know about women’s anatomy and the various sexual positions, and this jerk uses them all. All. The. Time. Repetitiously, constantly, and for no reason except, apparently, to make us hate him, which we do, and possibly as filler.

Have you ever known someone that makes up excuses to use objectionable language, because, see, they’re quoting someone? That’s how this feels to me.

There is no character development of any kind here. The book is short, but it feels interminable. I made it halfway through, then read the last twenty-five percent to be sure there wasn’t some redemptive element at the climax or the end. But there is no climax. There’s no story arc. For that matter, there are no gay people or bath houses, but hey, it’s alternative history, it’s fiction, and if Turtledove wants to leave out the gay people, he can do that.

But the disease? It comes from Africa. Oh, of course it does. Blaming the Black people for everything has apparently made it through from our time period to Turtledove’s invented world.

There is no redemptive feature to be found here, and frankly, the second star in my rating is there only as a wistful nod to this author’s earlier works. I recommend this book to anyone forced to purchase something for a horny, obnoxious male that wants a socially acceptable way to read porn. That’s it.

This is a book with a wonderful concept, but tells the wrong story. After a brutal, eye-opening prologue, the novels switched to being a correspondence romance, as the two main characters do not much whilst exchanging letters. I found myself quickly bored as Peter does the same thing every chapter studying for law school, and Viola does the same thing every chapter writing a book and talking with her dad. And for a book about HIV, to not give either of the viewpoint character the disease seems a missed opportunity to explore its devastating effects. A lot of potential but didn't live up to it.

The Wages of Sin is a well written, chilling, insightful alternate history novel by Harry Turtledove. Released 12th Dec 2023, it's 288 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.

The author really has a talent for combining meticulous research as well as a thorough knowledge of character and real life human nature into a synergistic ability to write realistic and believable alternate history. That's pretty much the only description necessary. He's a moderately talented (occasionally sublime) author who writes very well and believably about the what-if alternate history where, in this case), HIV was unleashed and made the jump to humans in the 16th century and not the more modern day when humans were much more equipped (when pushed) to cope with/solve/cure it.

He treats his protagonists (a young couple, kept at a distance for reasons of health and safety) with depth and compassion. Viola is intelligent (even brilliant) but denied the opportunities to study and contribute due to her sex, and Peter is presented in a favorable light as well. There are *big* themes here, women's rights, human nature on a large scale, the ill-treatment of people with terminal illnesses, class disparity, and the development of technology and information in a very different society.

Four stars. It's a good book, a thought provoking and effective book.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I read a good amount of alternate history, and "The Wages of Sin" by Harry Turtledove is probably the best of the genre I've read lately.

By the mid nineteenth century older girls and women are secluded in their homes. When they need to go outside they wear shapeless garments that cover their bodies and faces. They can't go anywhere on their own. They can't meet other people or socialize in public. Such strict rules were brought about in an attempt to stop the spread of The Wasting (HIV).

Viola and Peter are two young people matched by their parents. When Peter goes to university to study law, Viola stays home (the women always stay home) but finds ways to be productive. Their courtship happens via post as they share truths about themselves.

This was an enjoyable, if tense, read. With each new chapter I felt dread that I might read of one character or another showing signs of infection, and felt that something menacing was only a page turn away. I still have concerns.

This would be a great book club book. There is much to discuss regarding history, law, religion, and sociology.

I really wanted to like this one. What if HIV hit Europe in the 1600s is an interesting question, but Turtledove doesn't really grapple with it at all. The book opens with a series of graphic rape scenes, and posits that Henry the 8th would have died of AIDS before splitting from the Catholic Church and that women would be forced to cover themselves in essentially a burka and live confined lives, and then drops most of the interesting ideas in favor of closely following a wealthy pair of people with no connection to the illness at all. What would happen to poor women, who would have to work (most often in the homes of others at the time) goes unaddressed, the fate of sex workers is explored only through the fate of their clients, and the societal issues are unexplored in favor of what seems to be Turtledove's idea of a happy relationship, one that any woman will look at with horror. Not worth the time, and knowing I would have to review it put me off writing any reviews for months.

I have mixed feelings about this novel. On the one hand, I was excited when I first learnt of the question this well-known author of alternative histories was asking. What if HIV had spread across the world 450 years before it did, with no modern medicines to treat or contain it? On the other hand, I found the vehicle for Turtledove’s tale, that of a young middle class couple, Peter and Viola, engaged to be married, somewhat underwhelming.

The novel opens in 1509 with Portugese seaman in Africa being infected by a woman captured for the slave trade and then sold in Europe. It then skips forward to England in 1851 where the virus is widespread and known as the Wasting. Society as we know it has changed and it is women who have suffered most. Girls are only free to play outside and mix with boys until they reach puberty and then they must be sequestered at home, only venturing rarely outside clad in shapeless cloaks and veils, and when they do can expect to put up with catcalls and jeering, because men can’t be expected to control their carnal desires. Once sequestered, the only education girls receive is from their parents or reading books and with no opportunity to mix, marriages are arranged between families, with the couples meeting once to see if they might be compatible.

Peter, the son of a lawyer is taken to meet Viola, the daughter of a doctor with a view to becoming engaged before he is sent to Lincoln Inn’s Fields to study to become a barrister. There he must resist the call of the brothels frequented by his fellow students and remain a virgin until his marriage. Viola, bored with the confines of her home longs for women to have more freedom and especially to be able to travel, but all she can do is lose herself in travel books written by men and write letters to Peter.

I found the account of Peter’s law studies and Viola’s home life, while she waited for Peter, repetitive and not that interesting and felt it could have been dealt with more succinctly. However, I found the overall premise of this novel fascinating, especially when the author imagines changes that had great consequence due to historic figures and people of influence having died young or never being born at all. Such as Henry VIII succumbing to the disease before he could be divorced from Katherine, resulting in Britain remaining a Catholic country with Mary crowned Queen and no Elizabethan or Victorian eras. More of this type of thought-provoking speculation and a wider view of the effect of HIV on the world would have made the novel a more interesting read.

Uchronia is such an intellectual and precise exercise that it can be tricky for the authors not to lean into full science-fiction. And I must say that this read made me so very intrigued to dive into Harry Turtledove’s work, which is a crual shortcoming in the French’s publishing world. The span of the possibilities he explores truly is astounding, making the reader reconsider everything he knows about History. This story is at the crossroads of Margaret Atwood and Olivia Butler, with an epic action twist, which makes for a fast-paced political thriller. Moreover, is brings light to what aids truly is, which is a mortal disease that can strike upon anybody, and not some sort of ‘sin’ (as said in the title) that should be used in political agendas. Although it is definitely a niche book, I would recommend it easily to curious readers.

I've been a fan of Harry Turtledove for many years but up until now I've never seen a story that could have been more true than this novel. Having lived through the initial outbreak of AIDS, I can only imagine the horror if that had been released on the world 400 years earlier. We got a genuine feel for how those people managed against a terrible disease that perplexes modern medicine. Having medicine stuck in the 17 century is a wretched thought, it spreads its withering vines throughout the world and strangles it slowly and inevitably. I would have liked to hear more about the figures of history which would have been different because of dying earlier than on our earth, how rakes would become tragic footnotes to history never known because of that insidious disease. I liked the thought posing reading this book provides, this moves history in small, barely precieved increments in some ways much too familiar if left to ponder. My favorite fiction is that which reflects on real life and makes one wonder what if? This book does all that and so much more.

Few authors have been recognized as the unparalleled masters of a particular literary genre. At the top of that short list is Harry Turtledove, whose alternative histories include multigenerational sagas of an America in which the Confederacy won the Civil War and other tales in which magical creatures affected the course of history. His latest work, “The Wages of Sin,” lacks the eye-catching hook of many of his other books. Instead of a topsy-turvy Civil War, he asks what the world would look like if HIV had spread to Europe centuries before the medical tools existed to combat it. The premise has the potential to be just as fascinating as Turtledove’s other books, but a somewhat lackluster storyline dims its impact considerably.

In “Wages of Sin,” Portuguese slave traders brought HIV to Europe in the early 1500s, where the spread was dramatic. Most of the book is set in England in the 1850s. AIDS was referred to as the Wasting, and people knew how it spread but little else about the disease. To combat the disease’s spread, women were forced to wear concealing garments and veils in public to avoid inciting lustful ideas in men. (Real-world practices today are similar in some cultures.) Dating was non-existent; instead, English families arranged marriages for their children. However, brothels still flourish for those men seeking pleasure and willing to take a risk. To protect the rest of society, those who display the early symptoms of AIDS are branded with a “W” on their foreheads.

The protagonists of “Wages of Sin” are a young, engaged couple. Viola Williams is the daughter of the town doctor in Salisbury, a small distance over a day’s coach ride from London. Her fiancé, Peter Drinkwater, is the son of a local solicitor. For most of the book, he’s off at law school in London. She wants to be more than a housewife and is frustrated by the caste system in England. So, she reads and writes. He’s determined to stay on the straight and narrow and avoid the temptations his wealthy roommate succumbs to nightly at a local house of ill repute. They write each other letters that take a week to arrive. And they philosophize a lot.

If this plot description sounds somewhat bland, it is. Peter and Viola are ordinary, middle-class people. Viola’s fight against the establishment results in her gaining some notoriety in a surprising way, but Peter has few distinguishing characteristics other than a terrific study ethic. As I read “The Wages of Sin,” I waited for something to happen to justify the author’s choice of this couple as his gateway to this alternate world. Then I waited some more. I learned more than I cared to about how to make the stews that were the Williams’ usual nightly fare. And I learned about how students learned in 19th-century law schools. But overall, I was underwhelmed by the saga of Peter and Viola.

This book was much more enjoyable when the author described how life differed in his alternate version of England. The country remained Catholic since King Henry VIII died of AIDS before getting around to asking for the Church’s approval for a divorce. The American colonies were still part of the British Empire (although the author doesn’t go into great detail about how that happened). But when the author described the daily lives of British subjects in those days, I was hard-pressed to note many differences between actual history and Turtledove history. Stew making is stew making. A few trivial details were interesting, such as the recipients of letters had to pay the mail carrier three pence for the privilege. As an attorney, I probably found the description of law school more interesting than many other readers would. But much of the book just repeated the same few observations repeatedly.

The main problem with “The Wages of Sin” is the author’s framing device. This book would have been far more interesting had it been set in the mid-1500s or had the disease spread to Europe in the 1800s. In either case, the public’s fear and the government’s attempt to understand and control AIDS would have been far more compelling. By contrast, the disease here is a given, as are the adjustments in public life. Instead, we get an England similar to the modern-day America of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

“The Wages of Sin” doesn’t have as compelling a central theme as Turtledove’s Civil War books, and Peter and Viola aren’t as attractive as characters. The only reason to read this book is for the author’s predictions about how life would have differed because of the spread of AIDS centuries earlier than in real life. I’m giving the book a three-star rating and a mild recommendation, primarily for genre fans. “The Wages of Sin” are interesting, but readers have much better examples of Turtledove’s work on which to spend their wages.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for letting me read this book in advance of publication.

Harry Turtledove always makes me see a new perspective, and in Wages of Sin, he does that in spades.

We’ve all done it. Imagine a world where one single difference could have a massive impact on the world today. How would that play out for a first generation? And how about many years later?

In Wages of Sin, we’re introduced to a world where HIV made the jump to humans and was first spread in the early 1500s. European slave dealers, who caught the virus from the very slaves they had brutally captured, took the disease to their homelands. After only pages, the reader is both captivated by Turtledove’s deft characterization, and touched with dread for what will soon be ahead.

This would have been a fantastic jumping off point to continue the story in that timeline. It might have been easier that way. Seeing how the pre-industrial world would have dealt with this very recent virus would have had me flipping pages as quickly as I could. Turtledove’s choices were limitless. Where the story played out was perfection and had my iPad running long into the night.

Turtledove drops us into a world forever changed by the virus. In 1851 England, Viola Williams watches the world from her little quarters above her father’s doctor surgery office. She, like every other female of pubescent age, is kept apart from most men. AIDS, called the Wasting, has taken hold in every aspect of this world, and is generally not well understood. As a result, women and teenaged girls are kept behind closed doors except for very limited circumstances. The only men they're permitted to know are their fathers and siblings, while men are allowed every freedom.

Violet and her sisters live a quiet life, where they're afforded some small scraps of freedom by their parents. Viola, for example, helps her father to make diagnoses and discusses possible treatments for the townspeople who seek Dr. Williams’ help. But even that must take place in her quarters. She never actually sees a patient, only brainstorms symptoms and possible causes with her father. She is a more than capable assistant.

In another, less-cruel world, Viola might have been able to work openly as her father’s assistant. In this place, where women must be protected by their male relatives, most jobs are inaccessible to women. With the ultimate risk of The Wasting hovering over them, career is too lofty a goal for most women. Her sister Katherine’s talent at the harpsichord will wither just as Viola’s sharp brain and ways of deduction will never see the light of day.

Viola is always looking outward, her gaze firmly set on a world where men and woman can move about town freely. And while her family tries not to tamp down her dreams, they know they must be realistic. Strange men can’t be trusted. It is for a woman’s safety that she is locked away.

Soon, it becomes clear that Viola’s life will take her in new directions. Salvation comes from an unexpected corner. Peter, the son of her father's dearest friend, is presented as a potential husband. Since their fathers agree to the arrangement, Viola becomes determined to make their new connection work, though they can only get to know each other at a respectable distance.

Peter has opportunities Viola doesn’t and will be studying to become a solicitor, eventually taking over for his father. He and Viola vow to get to know each other over the miles, writing to each other frequently while he attends school in London. As Peter begins to find his footing at a Law school in the big city, Viola discovers a love for storytelling, and the belief that her world could change.

With the Wasting a constant thought on everyone’s mind and the fear of it dominating society, is the world ready for Viola to challenge the status quo? Setting pen to paper, she begins to dare dream that she can be more than her station and sex indicates, while hoping Peter never gives into temptation that could ruin them both.

This book manages to be incredibly contemporary to these moments in time, while presenting a past “could have been” that echoes the Handmaid’s Tale. Though Viola’s family treat each other well, other men taking liberties, just because they can, lurk around every corner outside their home. Viola, her mother and sisters can't even do their shopping without men and boys touching them as if they they had a God-given right to the women’s bodies. The women are told again and again that they're mere objects rather than humans.

It has taken me a few days to gather my thoughts. This book hit me on a deeper level than I anticipated. There’s a magic to the way Turtledove presents society through the small lens of average people in an average village. The focus sharpens and the reader can empathize with only a few main characters rather than a huge cast. The reader’s connection with Peter’s and Viola’s families are strengthened as we see them in slice-of-life moments.

As we see both characters evolve together and apart, it becomes clear that as their feelings for each other grow, so do their aspirations. Neither is fulfilled by their station in life, and they learn a great deal about themselves as they confront the cost of wishes and dreams.

Life doesn't exist in a vacuum in Turtledove’s world, and the story is threaded delicately with a richness that might be easy to miss. I’d expected this England to be ruled by Queen Victoria, but then I realized that is not our England. King Michael III rules his British subjects.

While I found the last third of the book a little rushed, that was only a minor blip. I tore through this book on first read, and then read it again more slowly, savoring the nuances of this version of 19th century England.

Turtledove has never shied sway from the big issues, and in this book, it is the most resonant aspect of his tale. Religion, different classes of people, women’s freedom, women’s rights, the give and take of a marriage, and, of course, the marking and shunning those infected by a terminal disease round out a story and a world brimming with possibilities.

This book is multi-layered, complex, thought provoking and utterly absorbing. Harry Turtledove has again shown why he’s considered the master of alternate history. Don't miss Wages of Sin!

This was a scary concept and worked overall as a alternate history novel. I thought it worked perfectly with what I was expecting and I felt like kept the sixteenth century elements overall. The characters were interesting and I thought they worked in this setting. Harry Turtledove does a great job in writing this.

I have found his previous titles to quite provocative, but this one, while the premise seemed interesting, did not engage me and I found it to be predictable (which is atypical for this author). It took me two tries to complete the book and much of the end was skimming. I am sure I missed some clever jokes in there (I got the Merchant of Venice variation), but this felt like a ghostwriter took an idea that Turtledove had and wove it into their own work. This is shorter and less grand in scope than his other works, in a way that is sadly disappointing to the reader.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of the book.

My review contains vague spoilers.

This is my first Turtledove novel after years of hearing about his impressive experience in alternate histories. The Wages of Sin takes a new spin on ‘pandemics’ with an old virus. What-if HIV sprung up in the 1500's? How would society be different? Well we certainly wouldn't have Shakespeare and that's a real tragedy.

*Viola quoted Marlowe: “‘ Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.’”*

Turtledove's knack with words is nothing new. The flow and pace of the novel is designed to keep one's attention, though I certainly could guess the plot points as easy as the next person.

Part of the problem of HIV is its ability to hide, adapt, and resurface years later. It's unique features have been documented for decades (I do highly recommend Paul Farmer’s writings on epidemics in Haiti and around the world). Humans take the risk daily. We have to. Many societies are not as lucky as the English to have the ability to sequester half their population and survive.

*He stayed in the refectory even so, while Walter went out to play the game he loved best: the dance with death*.

I wish that the story didn't have such a decent ending so that we could have seen more character dilema, more anger towards God, more empowerment of the lady author, more resistance against authority. (I read mostly fantasy novels and am young enough to still have hope…) Yet, this story follows a typical family, very ordinary and not one to bend the rules - except Viola herself points out …

“*Has it not occurred to you that I am an irregular person?” Viola said.*

Surely one raised in a doctor's household, as intelligent and well positioned as she is, would find a cure or at least…condoms?

The one thing I found rather frightening was the relatable nature of walking around and being harassed by the male population - those who seemingly have very little care for the struggles of the opposite sex.

*“I hope no one gave you trouble on the way over here,” Kate said. If that wasn’t one of the most common things women said to one another all around the world, Viola couldn’t imagine what would be. Men, after all, remained men all around the world.*

While Viola wonders what her Temeculans would do as an equal society, I hope that the most important thing Temeculans do is more impactful than just walking around nude…. Maybe having a more equal representation in government would be a good start? *Wages* tries to be a good thought-provoking novel, but doesn't break out of the box. Perhaps, in hindsight, that is part of the point?

As always, the author delivers a fantastic “what if?” This book can be read as an alternate history, a commentary, a satire, or an enjoyable novel. With rules and regulations stifling real thought, an epidemic rages on.