1632

Rating:
Summary: Good Hokey Fun
Review: This should have been a crappy book. But its not. The author does a good job of making his characters "real". There is no "fish out of the water" crap on the side of the Germans, or on the side of the Americans. It is one of the few books that has made me laugh aloud. It earned four stars on the basis of the humor, but it didn't get five stars because Eric Flynn just isn't that great of a writer.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Read!
Review: For a combination of action, adventure and fantasy, you could not do better than Eric Flint's "1632."

This action-packed adventure begins during the present year in the cafeteria of the small town of Grantville, West Virginia's High School. While the majority of the guests celebrate the wedding of two of the town's favorite residents, the parents of the groom cast a disapproving pall over the reception. Before any confrontation can take place, everyone is catapulted into a terrifying situation from which there is no escape.

A "Ring Of Fire" is what the residents of Grantville have named the sudden and frightening phenomenon. When a select group of friends venture out to investigate reports of fire, they discover that they "aren't in Kansas anymore." A wall of earth, cut as if by a sword, surrounds their town and area. After a brutal gun fight with several mercenaries and careful inspection of their surroundings, they realize they have traveled back in time to Thuringia, Germany, during the 30 Years War.

"1632" is an engaging story in how the modern meets the past, and how both must work together for the common good of all. Refugees hear of the "magic" town of Grantville, and flock there for safety. There are no quick solutions and no easy answers. The modern citizens of Grantville must work together with the citizens of the 1600's to prevent bloodthirsty mercenaries from destroying their homes and lives.

The characters are so well fleshed out and real, one could swear they lived and breathed. Eric Flint's characterization is phenomenal! The "modern" women and men find that they have much in common with the women and men of the Seventeenth Century. There are no shrinking violets in this novel! The women are tough, strong, while managing to remain believable as citizens of the Seventeenth Century. There are many engrossing subplots in this novel, but none had touched me so much as the relationship between the modern citizen and student, Jeff Higgins, and the refugee Gretchen Richter. Brutalized by mercenaries, she, along with the other women in a mercenaries' camp, are saved from a life of brutality and despair. To prevent Gretchen from being forced to return to prostitution to support her family, Jeff marries her. Chapters 18 to 31 alone are worth the price of the novel!

This is not so much a story of time travel and alternate history as it is a story of good triumphing over evil, of love triumphing over brutality and violence and of citizens from two very different worlds learning to work, live and laugh with each other in the face of one of the most brutal periods in history. For a can't-put-it-down, action packed, exhilarating good read, try "1632!"

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book and Fantastic Series Opener
Review: This is an extremely good book that is a lot of fun to read. Very hard to put down. The premise of a West Virginia town being sent back to the year 1632 in the middle of Germany and the 30 years war is just TOO good! Mr. Flint develops fine, rich characters and great plot twists. The book has now become a series with 1633 and others... the canvas created by this first work is so broad that there could potentially be dozens of follow-on books.

One word of caution - there is one single sex scene in the book that may be a bit strong for younger readers. Too bad, I always look for good books for my kids, but that one scene precludes this one from the list. Especially too bad since a much softer scene could have accomplished the same plot objectives.

Rating:
Summary: I LOVED this book!!!!!
Review: This is my best find of the year (so far at least).

A small West Virginia mining town has been transported to 1632 Germany in the middle of the 30 Year War. The Americans are shocked by the situation but quickly adapt. They realize that their original six square miles of territory is both in the path of the marauding armies and is too small to support them. The decision is made to establish a bit of America in the chaos that now surrounds them, to start the American Revolution a century and a half early. They began taking in refugees, German peasants escaping the brutalities of the merceneries, Jews fleeing persecution, and even some of the armies.

The characters are well written - the Americans who step into leadership roles to help their town adapt, the refugees who see their chance to for survival, the generals and nobles who are carrying on the war are made real.

The background on the 30 Years War is explained in a way that makes the conflict come alive. The choices that the town makes, the technologies they decide to keep or downsize are both plausible and logical. The quirky characters of the small town are familiar to anyone who has ever lived in one.

I could barely pull myself away from this book and I'll be getting the second one, 1633, as soon as possible. BUY THIS BOOK.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good Science Fiction
Review: Well, not so much science really. The deus es machina that pulls the characters into the past is weird, and from then on it reads as alternative history. But this is one of the best alternative history reads I've had. Flint writes far better than Turtledove, the alleged master of this genre. The characters are real, they develop, and I'm gripped at nearly every moment. The text isn't bogged down with historical details and trying to be accurate. The author is rather more interested in telling a story. The one drawback to the story is that there is *a lot* of violence. Arguably, violence is necessary to fully show the awfulness of conditions in 17th Century Europe. But some of the details could be avoided, and more time could be spent on non-violent life- or even non-violent action as possibilities. That said, I was still really drawn in to the text, found it difficult to put the book down (finishing it in 2 days), had no idea what would happen next, and can't wait to get to the next book in the series. Flint stays very true to their premise, and historical possibilities- if part of America showed up in 17th Century Europe, what would happen?

Rating:
Summary: Fun Alternate History
Review: Eric Flint's "1632" begins with the small mining town of Grantville being ripped from modern-day West Virginia and dropped in the middle of Germany, in the year 1631. 'How?' you ask? Who cares? Flint gives some far-future science fiction explanation. Most of the town's residents conclude that the 'Ring of Fire' is simply an Act of God.

But the question of how Grantville comes to seventeenth century Germany is not important. All that matters is what happens once the heavily armed town finds itself thirteen years into the Thirty Years' War, one of the most destructive religious conflicts in the history of Europe. Surrounded on all sides by hostile countries and marauding armies, mere survival is the town's chief concern. Grantville's modern weapons might be - barely - sufficient to hold off the ragtag bands of looters and mercenaries roaming the countryside. But if one of the major powers striving for supremacy over Central Europe decides to crush the town, Grantville will not be able to resist them on its own.

So the residents of Grantville decide to fight fire with fire and kick off the American Revolution a century and a half ahead of schedule. Grantville's only hope of survival lies in finding allies willing to tolerate democracy and religious pluralism, while at the same time recruiting those of their new neighbors who are sick and tired of being slaughtered by their aristocrats or for their religion. The early seventeenth century, with (on the one hand) feudalism and religion discredited by bloody warfare, persecution and oppression and (on the other) modern theories of representative government and rule of law just beginning to rear their heads, offers the slim possibility that Grantville will be able to pull through.

All this makes for a fast-paced and highly entertaining story. Flint, before this book best known for military science fiction, spends a lot of time on battle scenes, but still tries to focus on the power of ideas and ordinary people to change the world. Character development is better than normal for the genre, though still not great. Some characters, especially the sinister industrialist Tom Simpson, remain one-dimensional. Flint, who got a Master's Degree in African history before spurning the ivory tower to go into union organizing, often interrupts the narrative with brief history lessons, which I personally found interesting.

Although "1632" was originally written as a stand-alone novel, it was so popular that Flint was convinced to expand the story into a full-blown alternate history series, which continues in "1633" (coauthored with David Weber) and the "Ring of Fire" anthology. This means that even though there are more volumes for those who enjoy "1632," this book still comes to a satisfying conclusion and can be read on its own, without commitment to the larger series. Those who are still uncertain should know that Baen offers the book for free on its Web site, so the curious can check it out. There's really no reason not to.

Rating:
Summary: A fun, if not terribly believeable, romp
Review: I'm a big fan of alternative history, so I was naturally drawn to this book (and the series as a whole) by all the attention it's received. 1632 is definitely a fun read, and I'd recommend it to science fiction fans in search of a relatively light read.

You're going to have to seriously exercise your suspension of disbelief when reading this book during a number of passages, but that's at least somewhat understandable. After all, it wouldn't be much fun if the protagonists all died off from diseases, couldn't communicate with the locals, or found that they couldn't support a modern level of technology using only the infrastructure of a small West Virginian town.

Flint has a couple of bad habits as a writer that really come through in this book: first, it's very clear that a couple of his major characters are his favorites, and these characters are invariably going to make all the right decisions, always succeed at whatever they do, rapidly become accomplished statesmen and military strategists, and are, in fact, moral paragons - to an unbelievable degree - even in the face of extremely difficult and unfamiliar situations. And second, Flint's writing style could use some editorial polish. He uses too much exposition (admittedly, the Thirty Years' War is an extremely complex period and requires a great deal of explanation, but there's got to be a better way of pulling it off than this) and he has the bad tendency to reuse trite phrases, sometimes every few pages. This gets annoying at times. The characters (mostly modern day West Virginian coal miners) also use a level of vocabulary and sentence structure that real people just don't use. People just don't speak in half-page long paragraphs, nor do they use words like "pean" in ordinary conversations.

All that aside, read this book, you'll likely enjoy it if you're at all interested in the "Baen Books" style of light, military-oriented science fiction adventure novels.

I'd also recommend S. M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time series, which is probably a little more engaging than 1632.