Grantville Gazette, Volume II

Eric Flint

Oct 2003 · Ring of Fire - Gazette editions Book 2 · Baen Publishing Enterprises

About this ebook

The new United States in central Germany launches a one-plane Doolittle Raid on Paris, France. The target: their arch-enemy, Cardinal Richelieu. Meanwhile, an ambassador from the Mughal Empire of northern India is being held captive in Austria by the Habsburg dynasty. Mike Stearns decides to send a mercenary company to rescue him, led by two seventeenth-century mercenary officers: an Englishman and a Irishman, who seem to spend as much time fighting each other as they do the enemy.

Mike Spehar's "Collateral Damage" and Chris Weber's "The Company Men" are just two of the stories contained in this second volume of the Grantville Gazette. In other stories:
¾ a prominent Italian musician decides to travel to Grantville to investigate the music of the future;
¾ an American archer and a Finnish cavalryman become friends in the middle of a battlefield;
¾ a Lutheran pastor begins a theological challenge to the establishment based on his interpretation of the Ring of Fire;
¾ American and German detectives become partners to investigate a murder;
¾ and, in the first part of Danita Ewing's serialized short novel, An Invisible War, the new United States founds a medical school in Jena despite resistance from up-timers and down-timers alike.

The second volume of Grantville Gazette also contains factual articles which explain some of the technical background for the 1632 series, including articles on practical geology, telecommunications, and seventeenth-century swordsmanship.

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

Ratings and reviews

Another excellent addition to the 1632 series. I really like the short fiction. But, the non fiction is just as interesting. As a telecommunicator (AKA: Police Dispatcher), I particularly liked the piece on telegraph/telephone service and mechanics. The 'novella' An Ivisible War was a little different than I was expecting. It was well written, but I found myself getting annoyed with the downtimer attitudes (which is probably what the author was striving for; so good for her). The stories that come from the point of view of the downtimers are very interesting. Now, on to the next installment. The eBook was formatted OK with just a couple of minor spelling errors.

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.