Review: "World War 2.1" by John Birmingham

WW2.1 is a well-done time-travel military SciFi story. Man, that was a lot of attributes.
The plot is basically that a multinational(primarily American, but also consisting of French, Free Indonesian, Aussie and Pommie ships) task force from 2021 sent to deal with an Islamic jihadist revolution in Indonesia is swept up by a quantum experiment and sent back to 1942 in the middle of Midway. A battle erupts between the confused past US and UN fleets, but eventually ends and they combine forces to deal with the Japs and Nazis. The plot leads on from there, drawing especially on the social differences between 1942 and 2021.

Though it does suffer the general problems of military SF(a little too boyzone adventure, perhaps not black and white but with definite black and white, then a few shades of grey, mainly close to either side), it excels in its field and has well-written action scenes and a brilliantly imagined near-future technological scene. The characters may be slightly cardboard, but a few are geniunely interesting characters. My primary complaint is that it covers too short a timescale, not letting us see the full consequences of the time travel event. I'm still giving it 7.5.
Rating: 7.5/10