1632

Eric Flint

Feb 2000 · Ring of Fire Book 1 · Baen Publishing Enterprises

About this ebook

The Ultimate Y2K Glitch....

1632 In the year 1632 in northern Germany a reasonable person might conclude that things couldn't get much worse. There was no food. Disease was rampant. For over a decade religious war had ravaged the land and the people. Catholic and Protestant armies marched and countermarched across the northern plains, laying waste the cities and slaughtering everywhere. In many rural areas population plummeted toward zero. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

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

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED....

When the dust settles, Mike leads a small group of armed miners to find out what's going on. Out past the edge of town Grantville's asphalt road is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell; a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter Iying screaming in muck at the center of a ring of attentive men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot.

At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Ratings and reviews

I really wanted to like this book, to immerse myself in it. After all, I've read and enjoyed all Harry Turtledove's novels. However, the frequent long sections where the author doesn't get around to telling the reader what the heck he's talking about are a huge turnoff. Looong passages about some idea that has come into some character's mind, but the reader has no idea. Looong passages about the solution to some problem, and though the problem is clear, the solution is once again a secret in a character's imagination. Looong passages consisting of unfinished sentences and fragmented thoughts. I think the problem lies, in part, in the author assuming a shared context with the reader. I understand that his future works have the benefit of greater writing experience, and thus hopefully may avoid these pitfalls. However, to assume the reader knows what you mean when you haven't WRITTEN what you mean is a highschool-level mistake. It is clear that part of this assumed common context between writer and reader comes from an assumed USAmerican-ness. Every author in the English language needs to recognise how widespread this language is, and write with a view to the diversity of the potential readership. This book, this author, fails to do so. Fails badly. We shouldn't have to keep cross-referencing obscure references to US history just to understand the characters and the events of this story. If the historical references are important to the narrative, then they should be explained in the text.

A wonderful romp. I can't fully express just how much I enjoyed this book. It's not going to go down as a classic masterpiece, but it is extremely fun and informative. The premise wonderful. The characters are pretty well developed. The book was pretty fast paced. The historical aspect was exciting to read about. I can't wait until I read the next book. Thanks to Baen and the author for offering this as part of Baen's Free Library. The eBook was formatted well, with only one noticeable spelling error

I've never paid much attention to historical fiction or alternative history due to the context surrounding the events that are usually depicted. But this book has turned around my views on that and really gave me an often timehumors, but serious evaluation of that opinion. Well written and worth your time. I only regret that the books ends so well, would have loved to have read a series that stretched out indefinitely.

About the author

Eric Flint is the author of the New York Times best seller 1634: The Galileo_Affair (with Andrew Dennis) a novel in his top-selling "Ring of_ Fire" alternate_ history series. His first novel for Baen, Mother of Demons, was picked by Science Fiction Chronicle as a best novel of the year. His 1632, which launched the Ring of Fire series, won widespread critical praise, as from Publishers Weekly, which called him "an SF author of particular note, one who can entertain and edify in equal, and major measure." A longtime labor union activist with a master's degree in history, he currently resides in northwest Indiana with his wife Lucille.