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1632 (Assiti Shards #1)

4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 · rating details · 3,683 ratings · 317 reviews

FREEDOM AND JUSTICE -- AMERICAN STYLE1632 And in northern Germany things couldn't get much worse. Famine. Disease. Religous war laying waste the cities. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia, and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the enti...more

Mass Market Paperback, 597 pages

Published June 30th 2006 by Baen Books (first published January 1st 2000)

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Dec 11, 2010 Ron rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, maps, connecticut_yankee

Flint set out to write an optimistic Connecticut Yankee story and he succeeded. Things came too easy (they just happened to have an M-60 and three boxes of ammo)and the good guys always won, but he hewed to his formula. (Wonder how his Americans in Europe in 1632 would have reacted to the murderous attack on their school children had Flint written this after 9-11-2001?)

The most fun section was the appearance and exploits of Captain Gars. "A mad man. It is well known."

I may doubt that a 2000 comm...more

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Jan 17, 2008 Kirt rated it 3 of 5 stars

So, I finished reading Eric Flint's 1632 recently. The premise of the book is a modern-day West Virginia miner town is thrown backward in time to the middle of the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years War.

The Good: It's established in the introduction to the book that when the town is sent back in time -- due to some aliens monkeying with space-time as a form of "art" -- another universe splits off. So it is possible for the 20th century people in the town to change the timeline. This pleas...more

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May 14, 2012 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

[Had a very satisfying review written, accidentally refreshed the page, and poof, all you get is a poorly recalled rehash.] This first book is easily the most interesting, propelling you into the 17th century with exciting detail. While the rest of the series offers many glimpses of the indigenous peoples encountering future-born notions, only 1632 lets the reader share the Americans' dawning realization of their new existence.

There are several sequels, which are not necessarily chronological. I...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Marko rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've never been much interested in these alternate history series, but when I found one set in one of my favourite periods in the setting of the 30 year war, I could not help but give it a chance. Unfortunately, to put it bluntly, I was disappointed both by the quality of the story and the depiction of the historical era.

The novel tells the story of a small US township that is automagically transported back in time and place in the middle of the Thirty Year War in Germany. The Americans take thi...more I've never been much interested in these alternate history series, but when I found one set in one of my favourite periods in the setting of the 30 year war, I could not help but give it a chance. Unfortunately, to put it bluntly, I was disappointed both by the quality of the story and the depiction of the historical era.

The novel tells the story of a small US township that is automagically transported back in time and place in the middle of the Thirty Year War in Germany. The Americans take this major cataclysm rather calmly (no crying over lost loves or other emotional outbreaks) and almost immediately start using their phenomenal skills to mold a new United States for themselves. Apparently, every single person in this township happened to own modern weaponry and cartloads of ammunition and one Vietnam veteran even had an M60 stored away for such an occasion. Even cheerleaders turn out to be expert marksmen who murder the soldiers of the Holy Roman Empire with wild abandon.

The characters posing as inhabitants of the area that the Americans decide to conquer as their own are all very much taken by the American way of life and immediately forget all about their religious beliefs, ethics and values. As one reviewer at Amazon said, "17th century battlehardened mercenaries, haughty nobility and ignorant peasants alike renounce their entire belief system in days once introduced to ice-cream, cute cheerleaders and American politics --- that part rings so seriously untrue it completely destroyed my enjoyment of this novel."

One of the most boring aspects of the novel was the fact that it focussed very much on the political discussions of the time travellers, who discuss endlessly the various facets of their production facilities etc. As an history enthusiast, I would have liked to see more focus on the period and the world of the early 17th century, but - given the freedom that the author takes with the values and mores of the characters of the time - perhaps it is better that he did not attempt to describe the period too much. Additionally, the time travellers (or time displacementees) happily kill the "natives" with no remorse at all - and it seems that the author justifies this by the fact that the mercenaries of that time were ruthless to begin with. And forgets that he's describing his heroes as even worse kind of murderers - people who kill their enemies in vast hordes just because they can, with little or no mercy.

Overall, this was a disappointing and rather boring read.(less)

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Oct 16, 2008 Barb rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: an early-modern European history geek

Recommended to Barb by: The boys of Caer Cynin

Shelves: historical-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 11, 2013 Martha rated it 2 of 5 stars

In short, I'll link to this user's review, since he basically sums up everything I thought about this book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The long version:

The author is extremely enthusiastic about small-town rural life and God, guns, 'Merica...and it's not necessarily a good thing. Life in this town is whitewashed; none of the cons of the living situation are ever pointed out, and it seems really convenient that the town just so happens to have everything it needs--coal mine, etc--for...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Bjorn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes, a writer will come up with a watertight plot. Sometimes... not so much.

Robert Ludlum wrote a foreword for The Road To Gandolfo where he said that he really hadn't intended for his novel (about a former US soldier kidnapping the pope and replacing him with a failed opera singer) to turn into a comedy. It was just that the more he worked at it, the more a voice at the back of his head kept screaming with laughter: "You can NOT be serious!" And so eventually, he couldn't make the plot wo...more Sometimes, a writer will come up with a watertight plot. Sometimes... not so much.

Robert Ludlum wrote a foreword for The Road To Gandolfo where he said that he really hadn't intended for his novel (about a former US soldier kidnapping the pope and replacing him with a failed opera singer) to turn into a comedy. It was just that the more he worked at it, the more a voice at the back of his head kept screaming with laughter: "You can NOT be serious!" And so eventually, he couldn't make the plot work, and gave up and just let it be a self-parody.

Eric Flint doesn't do that, though it must have been tempting. He has a plot that hinges on something that makes no rational sense in the world he wants to set it, about a West Virginia coal-mining town from the year 2000 getting sent back to the 30 Years' War, and so he opens with an introduction that essentially says: "Aliens did it. I'm not going to mention them again. They have nothing to do with the plot at all. But just so you know - the reason a chunk of West Virginia is now in 17th century Germany? Aliens. Now, let's not worry about the hows and just get on with the story."

It really takes the pressure off, gives the readers a chance to decide for themselves how seriously they want to take the story while he gets to play it more or less straight. That's good. Because if I were to try to take this story completely seriously, I'd probably hate it. That's the problem with a writer like Dan Brown, for instance; he lays claim to credibility that he simply cannot live up to, while Flint starts it all off with a knowing wink.

Anyway, I'm sure you can guess what happens when a bunch of hard-workin' straight-shootin' no-bullshittin' mountain folk end up in the middle of a huge war over religion and politics; they cock their 21st century shotguns, load up the pickup, blast Reba McEntire and decide to start the American revolution a few hundred years earlier. And to do this, of course, they join up with the good protestant king Gustav Adolf of Sweden and start kicking papist ass. It's to Flint's credit, though, that for all its flirts with jingoism, machismo and blond-heroes-vs-swarthy-heathens, 1632 never becomes the flag-waving God&Guns fantasy it might have. Flint's WVians aren't necessarily PC liberals, but the novel constantly checks itself, asking what can be done, what should be done, arguing tolerance, adaptation and co-operation over domination and isolation. That's good too. And it's interesting to see the choices they have to make to try and survive and help out when there's just a handful of them caught up in one of the most devastating wars of all history; as one Vietnam war veteran puts it, all he knows how to do is call in air support, and they're not getting any of that. They have to build from scratch, and they can't do it alone.

What's not so good is... well, as entertaining as it often is, and it is a lot of fun watching him play out his over-the-top plot as if it made perfect sense, nobody could really call Flint a good writer. His prose is functional meat-n-potatoes stuff at best, unbearably flowery at worst, and his characters are for the most part painfully one-dimensional; the time travel trip that means they'll never get back home doesn't really impact the characters much, the good guys are completely good with no flaws or doubts whatsoever, the bad guys are bad baddy bad bad, and the poor people caught in between are just misled and have no problem at all adapting to the new way of things. Flint has certainly done his homework - perhaps a little too much so - on early-modern warfare and technology, but perhaps not so much on the other differences that have played out over the last 400 years.

But nevermind; aliens did it. 1632 is an entertaining romp, one with perhaps more thought put into it than it needed to be just an entertaining romp, and while some of it falls flat on its face (and please, Flint, get someone who speaks German to write the German dialogue for you) I can't help but admire the sheer ballsiness of it. (less)

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Apr 10, 2013 Adi Greif rated it 3 of 5 stars

I rated the book 3 stars because it was a fun read and because it's interesting to see the perspective of an author purposefully trying to promote hillbilly America. I was more interested in the author's depiction of what Americans should value than in the plot. The book is an exercise in self-glorification --- American values and hillbilly know-how are capable of achieving anything! And when transplanted to the Thirty Years War, certainly capable of successful evangelizing the Bill of Rights. T...more

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Apr 05, 2013 Alan Smith rated it 1 of 5 stars

Backward, disease-ridden and unenlightened Europe is set to rights by good all-American know-how, bravery and technology. A perfect metaphor for the real world, for surely everyone knows that it's only the stars and stripes that stand between justice and truth, and the evil Islamic/Satanic/Socialist/Pornography conspiracy that threatens to destroy all that decent people hold dear.

For those that have drunk the Bushian kool-aid, this metaphor will probably be enough. Anyone a little more, let's s...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Gina rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The premise is great - a chunk of West Virginia gets mysteriously displaced and dropped into 1632 Germany, right in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The characters were well drawn. The history is factually accurate. I was intrigued by how the people from 1632 would accept the people from the future, and how they would react to the modern conveniences and weaponry of the future, and a lot of that is handled well, but the dialogue gets so sappy at times, and is so drawn out...please, let's just...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Cheryl rated it 3 of 5 stars

I recently picked this book up again. I had tried to read it once, and hadn't made it through. This time I did, I think in part due to the fact that I could spend large blocks of time reading because I was on vacation. There are so many characters, and the scope of his history gets to be so vast, I was getting lost and confused by all the character names and relationships.

I liked the fact that the author immediately said that a paradox wasn't created, and instead is using the multiple time strea...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Christine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-reads

kay, first of all set aside any preconceived notions of realism and just accept that the world author has created is possible and then accept that it's as true to life as can be imagined. Yes, I know it's contradictory, but if you can do this, then you're in for a fun ride with this series.

"In April of the year 2000, a six-mile sphere centered on Grantville, West Virginia was displaced in space and time to Germany and May, 1631. The inhabitants of Grantville decided to start the American revolut...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Kratima rated it 5 of 5 stars

For me, this is "An Yankee at King's Arthur Court" on steroids; this the mother-load of all the alternative history / time-travel books I've ever read; this is great!

I admit the story needs a (rather big) bit of suspended belief, but it reads easily, it is fun and decently researched. The realism is not at Bernard Cornwell-standards, even leaving the time-travel bit apart. The initial idea is beautifully developed. The characters are a bit uni-dimensional (either good or bad, no inbetween gray),...more

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Dec 12, 2011 Rebecca rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, fantasy

This is a pleasant, well-researched exercise in wish fulfillment.

The author did an immense amount of research (some of which will be poured into your head via chapter long info-dumps). It's an underserved time period that is inherently interesting. The characters are heart-warming, each with their own Crowning Moment of Awesome. It's a fun, sweet romp.

There is absolutely no narrative tension whatsoever.

At no point does any character experience a real setback or any frustration more than momentar...more This is a pleasant, well-researched exercise in wish fulfillment.

The author did an immense amount of research (some of which will be poured into your head via chapter long info-dumps). It's an underserved time period that is inherently interesting. The characters are heart-warming, each with their own Crowning Moment of Awesome. It's a fun, sweet romp.

There is absolutely no narrative tension whatsoever.

At no point does any character experience a real setback or any frustration more than momentary. Only minor characters die and one major character receives an injury we never get the confirmation of the seriousness of. Only one bad judgement call is made, and the other characters hasten to reassure the person who makes the mistake that it was the only thing he could have done. (And almost no damage is caused because of it.) Possible conflicts are repeatedly set up (challengers to leadership, accusations of witchcraft, unrest between union and non union members, racism, sexism, etc) and dispelled immediately, usually on the same page. No one has legitimate differences of opinion on anything that truly matters that can't be resolved in a page and a half (usually by saying they argued a lot but eventually came around, without showing the argument).

Each major character is essentially a Mary Sue. The union leader is the Best Leader Ever. The Jewish doctor's daughter is the Smartest Person Ever. The spunky cheerleader is the Best Sniper Ever, the newcomer to town is the Best Leader of Germany Infantry Ever, the nerd is the Best Warleader Ever, his sweetheart is the Best Hooker With a Heart of Gold Ever. The actual historical King was the BEST MONARCH OF ALL TIME, NO REALLY. (In fact, I suspect the book may have been written in the first place because the author loves this historical figure and wanted him to have a better ending than his actual death.)

Everyone falls in love in the second quarter of the book, mostly improbably, and everyone immediately has a happy marriage with no culture shock, despite differences in time period, religion, and language spoken. No one longs after an impossible object, there are no misunderstandings, no unrequited affection, no disapproving relatives. Girl meets guy, both fall in love in the first 30 seconds, and all barriers are blown down as soon as they come up.

The author has an afterword in which he rather defensively explains that he wanted to write a "sunny" book featuring decent, working class heroes. He justifies his nerd who falls for an ex-prostitute with similar stories from WWII. I do not require justifications to feature well-meaning, hardworking, decent people instead of angsty antiheroes, nor do I challenge the likelihood of a young man rescuing a woman from being a forced camp follower and it coming out well. It's ok to want to write a book with a mostly positive outlook. But I think that he took it too far--happy endings do not require everything to turn out well for the protagonists at every single stage with no setbacks, and not every attraction turns into a stable marriage. These people have been ripped from their time period never to return, many losing family in the process. They can expect to die earlier than they would have otherwise, their children's futures will be entirely different, their fundamental assumptions of the world have to be changed. The natives they encounter have been brutalized, oppressed, starved, raped, tortured, and more. I'm not asking for wallowing, but I think a certain amount of respect for the amount of trauma this plot device has caused is called for. A magical orgasm does not cure months of rape after watching your family slaughtered.

Let us see good hardworking people make a few mistakes and learn how to correct for them; let us see some romances end disastrously and the survivors pick up and move on. Let us worry that the wrong person will win the election, or the overconfident Americans will lose a battle that involves conditions they are not used to. Americans and our technologies are not perfect. And you can have decent characters and happy endings without demanding that they be so.(less)

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Aug 05, 2011 Jeanne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Alternate history novel which focuses on what happens when an entire town is transported back to the middle of 17th century Germany, during the middle of the Thirty Years War.

The good things about this work are its intense descriptions of the battle techniques and weapons of the day and what a difference a little bit of modern firepower can make. It is obviously awell researched look at the politics and religious battles of the Europe of that age.

On the negative side, characters are not well de...more

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May 21, 2011 Sean rated it 3 of 5 stars

"1632" by Eric Flint is a book motivated by an interesting idea and executed inconsistently. Taking a classic alternate history trope the first book of the "Ring of Fire" project (see below) sets up an ambitious premise with characters that can't help but charm the reader and keep them engaged through even the roughest patches.

The premise is simple as it is intriguing: the entire town of Grantville, West Virginia find themselves transported from 2001 America to 1632 Central Germany at the heigh...more "1632" by Eric Flint is a book motivated by an interesting idea and executed inconsistently. Taking a classic alternate history trope the first book of the "Ring of Fire" project (see below) sets up an ambitious premise with characters that can't help but charm the reader and keep them engaged through even the roughest patches.

The premise is simple as it is intriguing: the entire town of Grantville, West Virginia find themselves transported from 2001 America to 1632 Central Germany at the height of the Thirty Years' War. Far from being melancholy or extremely silly as the genre tends to go between, "1632" is more of a "positive" alternate history which casts the entire town as a "collective protagonist" whose presence in the timeline will have negative but also real, positive effects. I do not wish to give too much away about the plot or characters but I will say that while the characters are for the most part one-dimensional, I couldn't help but feeling for them and caring about their fates.

Far from focusing solely on larger historical events, what makes the novel tick is that it is willing to engage with the every day characters and the real, practical considerations that would need to be taken by a 20th century town in the 17th century. How would they practically survive? What would the relationship be with the native Germans that surround them? What effect would they have on the world, both in terms of technology and ideas? Behind all of these questions is the feeling that the American characters from West Virginia would attempt to make the best of the situation and integrate themselves into the world they had come to inhabit.

The "Ring of Fire" project is the result of this event. The author decided that it would be fun to create a large, multilevel world where different authors could explore the premise of "1632" on a mass-scale. The project shows how complex history can be and how one change can have wide-reaching effects. In addition to twelve different novels co-written or authored by others there are anthologies of short stories and a monthly web magazine called "The Grantville Gazette" which expand the premise of the story further.

I would give the book a four out of five for premise and ideas but a two out of five for writing. Please don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the book immensely but found the writing to be noticeably distracting and awkward. Still, it is a book I would recommend for beach reading or something fun and mindless - an enjoyable alternate history for a rainy day. (less)

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Mar 26, 2011 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you really want to read some good reviews of this book read some of the other folks' on this page. I liked the book a lot, but don't need to rehash their compliments and criticisms. I just want to give you a warning: This book doesn't end. It just stops. The next book does the same. Subsequent books fork and the characters disperse and you start to realize that the authors writing in this universe don't ever plan for the stories to finish up. It's a fascinating read, but there's never any res...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Beboots rated it 5 of 5 stars

The plot goes thusly: the small West-Virginian town of Grantville is displaced in time and place from the year 2000 to the year 1632, essentially dumping them in the middle of the Holy Roman Empire in the midst of the Thirty Years War, one of the most bloody conflicts in European history.

And it is awesome. The West Virginians don't try to pretend that they're sorcerers or anything: they're just brutally honest. And maintain their American values. They quickly take charge of their own situation...more

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Sep 03, 2010 Faith Justice rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: given-away

An alternate history. From the back:

"1632. And in northern Germany things couldn't get much worse. Famine. Disease. Religious war laying waste the cities. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

2000. Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America which Mike leads) is having a good time.

THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED...

Wh...more

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Sep 01, 2010 Annikka rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 25, 2009 Nick Black marked it as warily-considering

Shelves: have-ebook

Recommended from a strange place: http://www.giantbomb.com/fallout-3/61.... I'm gonna ride this one out precisely until it gets ridiculous, and at that point drop it like a bad habit.

btw, doesn't this remind you of The Handmaid's Tale? (before you ask, "FLK problem" refers to Funny Looking Kid, not Fetal Liver Kinase. The Health Physics Society keeps an excellent FAQ regarding pregnancy + radiation here. Don't ask me how I know this, as I'm unsure myself):

"The ugly side of life continues. We do...more Recommended from a strange place: http://www.giantbomb.com/fallout-3/61.... I'm gonna ride this one out precisely until it gets ridiculous, and at that point drop it like a bad habit.

btw, doesn't this remind you of The Handmaid's Tale? (before you ask, "FLK problem" refers to Funny Looking Kid, not Fetal Liver Kinase. The Health Physics Society keeps an excellent FAQ regarding pregnancy + radiation here. Don't ask me how I know this, as I'm unsure myself):

"The ugly side of life continues. We do the same with food. Food and water are checked for radioactivity. The clean food goes to the children and young women, the more contaminated food to the lower priority groups. That old woman? She gets the self-frying steaks. Abortion and contraception are likely to be highly illegal. We MUST have those babies. There will be more than enough parents who have lost their own (or have received too high a radiation dose to chance the FLK problem) to look after any that are unwanted. Women are enslaved by their reproductive systems (again). Don't like that, but there is nothing we can do about it. The social pressure on women to have children will be immense in both material and moral senses. Women who can have children get the best of everything: the cleanest and best food, the most comfortable housing, the most careful protection. Women who can have children but refuse to do so will be social outcasts (and in this sort of society, to be an outcast is virtually a death sentence). We're likely to see a situation where women of childbearing age are "protected" by severe restrictions ("don't go outside the house, the radiation may harm your babies" gets abbreviated to "don't go outside"). This is a grim and disturbing picture; we take an old woman out of her house and throw her in the snow to provide shelter for a pregnant mother and her children - then lock her in. Newborn babies obviously damaged by radiation are likely to be killed on the spot. That may or may not be justifiable; I think it's inevitable."(less)

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Sep 28, 2009 Kristi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, middling, up-til-3am, fourstars

What a very fun book to read! And what a great way to get someone interested in a period of history. Sure, there's the jingoistic "Americuh, **** yeah!" aspect to it, but it's often played for laughs.

The premise of the book is that about a 6 mile radius sphere of a modern day West Virginian small mining town is suddenly scooped out due to an advanced species' temporal negligance and dropped down in the middle of Germany in 1631, about 10 years into the ferociously vicious and bloody Thirty Year...more

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Aug 25, 2009 Kressel Housman added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, fiction, historical-fiction, regrettable-reads

This book is exciting, addictive, and full of adventure, romance, and history, but after reading it, I felt like my mind needed the ritual purification of a mikvah. It’s a fantasy story in which a 21st century town in West Virginia is mysteriously transported back to 1632 Europe, which is in the throes of the Thirty Years’ War. To deal with this crisis, Mike Stearns, head of the coalminers’ union, begins to organize a government, introducing democracy and technology to a world that badly needs i...more This book is exciting, addictive, and full of adventure, romance, and history, but after reading it, I felt like my mind needed the ritual purification of a mikvah. It’s a fantasy story in which a 21st century town in West Virginia is mysteriously transported back to 1632 Europe, which is in the throes of the Thirty Years’ War. To deal with this crisis, Mike Stearns, head of the coalminers’ union, begins to organize a government, introducing democracy and technology to a world that badly needs it.

Much as I loved the historical backdrop of the book (the author definitely did his research), it’s the characters that drive the story. There’ s a pretty big cast of them, heroes and heroines from both time periods who learn to pool their strengths as they build their new world. The book also includes three “mixed time” romances, and it’s because of them that I can’t recommend this book.

First, there are some very explicit bedroom scenes. As an Orthodox Jew, I felt I had to skip those, which in most cases meant skipping whole chapters and understanding, “Couple X is happy now.” But my biggest objection of all is to the portrayal of the 17th century Jewess, Rebecca Abarbanel, who becomes the girlfriend of Mike Stearns.

In the beginning, I loved Rebecca. Though she is supposed to be a Marrano, a Jew posing as a Christian and fleeing the Inquisition, she is portrayed as a practicing Jew. She is so tzniusdig (modest) that she smoothes her skirt over her knees out of sympathetic embarrassment for the scantily clad 21st century girls. I thought that was a beautiful detail, very true to a frum woman’s sensibilities. But over time, Rebecca becomes “liberated.” She is not only Mike’s national security advisor, she is the town’s news anchorwoman, all of which is fine with me, but part of her “liberation” includes using curse words and sleeping with Mike before their wedding day. Is that supposed to be an improvement in her character? Is being ladylike necessarily backward? I, for one, don’t think so.

For these reasons, I cannot rate this book. From the standpoint of entertainment, it deserves a 5, but I cannot in good conscience recommended it to anybody. As much as I enjoyed it, I’m convinced that reading this book, for me at least, was nothing short of a sin. (less)

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Jun 26, 2009 Annette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: alternate-history, historical-fiction

Plot summary: a West Virginian town and its residents are mysteriously transported en masse to 17th century Germany. Finding themselves in the middle of the 30 Years War, they proceed to hold the American Revolution 150 years early.
I'd like to give this one a 3.5. It's a good read, no doubt at all, for any lover of the alternate history genera. I liked the characters, and the plot scenarios were interesting and entertaining. But the problem is I've just read the "Island in the Sea of Time" tril...more

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Dec 12, 2012 Janne Järvinen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, scifi

This book is bright, hopeful, and positive, so I can see why many people would not like it. I agree with author in that cynical does not automatically equal intelligent, and positive does not automatically equal naive.

The writing is not superb, but easily passable. The first few chapters were a bit jarring for me, mainly because of the terse writing, but once the story really started rolling, I was well and truly hooked.

There's really no plot, and the characters are not complex or nuanced. The b...more

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Nov 18, 2009 Russ Vanneman rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book, like most of the still-continuing books in the series, is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek rendering of the tale of a West Virginia minding town that is transported, intact, into late 1631 in the middle of Germany during the 30 Wars War. The head of the local miners' union takes it upon himself and his town to find a way to survive the wars, and turns Europe upside down in his endeavors to create a more "American" Europe.

This book continues through many followups, including five Grantham Ga...more

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Sep 09, 2011 Patrick rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

About a quarter of the way through this book, I got the same unpleasant, slightly dirty feeling you get when you suddenly realize you've been groovin' along to Christian rock. This story of a small West Virginian town suddenly transported to 17th century Europe is the worst kind of pro-American rhetoric, thinly disguised as science-fiction.

The author shrewdly chooses to drop his scale model of small town American values at a time and place where the natives are impressed with the ingenuity and m...more

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Oct 09, 2010 Flint rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

This book was well paced and appears to have been researched well for it's historical accuracy. However a few things bothered me about the book. First of all, where is the psychological impact that would in all likelyhood accompany an event like being trapped in the distant past? There aren't any suicides, unrest or anything among the citizens of the town. Everyone seems to be fine with the situation. As a matter of fact there's something of a non chalant attitude towards everything that's happe...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Kribu rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: war, time-travel, sci-fi, germany

One star, only because I somehow managed to read all of it, so I'm rounding up from zero. Although the reason I managed to read it at all is that it was one of those train-wrecky things, the things one just can't help but keep staring at in horrified fascination.

This was just bad in every possible way - atrocious writing, the most cardboard characters imaginable, half a dozen instances of insta-love (which happened to, like, everyone) and the overwhelming gung-ho cowboy American mentality, with...more

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Jul 06, 2010 Douglas rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook, science-fiction

This was a good read. I mostly enjoyed myself.

There was a great deal of historical data to supply context for the story as the town of 20th Century Grantville, WV was dropped into the middle of medieval Germany during the 30 Year War. I cannot verify the accuracy of that data, but it worked for the tale. I have to admit that I found some of the historical details something of an info dump at times. I skipped a lot, though my friends who recommended the book claimed they ate up every letter. I d...more

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War

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About Eric Flint

Eric Flint is a New York Times bestselling American author, editor, and e-publisher. The majority of his main works are alternate history science fiction, but he also writes humorous fantasy adventures.

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1634: The Galileo Affair (Assiti Shards, #3)

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avg rating	preview: 1632 Goodreads rating: 4.06 (3683 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16967.1632?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1166765511l/16967.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16967.1632?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]1632 by Eric Flint[/url]

1632 (Assiti Shards #1)

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