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gridloreJust finished 1634: The Bavarian Crisis by Eric Flint and Virginia DeMarce. The latest in the avalanche of Ring of Fire books, this one address events in Bavaria, Austria, and the Upper Palatinate. The main thrust of events surrounds the historical marriage of Duke Maximillian of Bavaria to his niece Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria. However, the Archduchess has been reading up-time encyclopedias and other books, and is beginning to get some different ideas about duty. Then actual uptimers get involved. . .
This book should have been a romp. It has kidnappings, intrigue, narrow escapes, disguises, villains, heroes, and True Love. It should have been tight, with action flying left and right. The second half of the book is like that. The first half? A slog.
I blame Ms. DeMarce. She's a brilliant historian, no doubt. But the two books in this series that she's co-written have been bogged down by excessive detail. Ten pages of characters and four genealogies? Too much! There was too much time spent setting up why a convoy of people from Grantville had to go to the Palatinate. One was a mission to look into getting iron production restarted. This was merely a pretext for getting characters in place for the further events. Others were a downtimer looking to collect on her deceased husband's estate, the wife of the USE Navy's commander searching for funds for a school, etc. This was all secondary, and not important to the story. The reason for the trip was to put the characters into the action!
In stead we get almost 300 pages of detailed discussion of legal affairs, the inner workings of the mining cartels (including, I swear, a full page of nothing but a listing of the various towns and holdings in the Upper Palatinate. WHY?), and the minutiae of training teachers in 17th century Europe. Meantime, we slowly, ever so slowly, start to see the plot. But at least half of the first half of this book needed to be dumped and rewritten.
Once things get moving, the book becomes fun and the farcical romp it should have been. But you really can't hate a book that has a Spanish princling declare "Think of the songs! Think of the poems! Think of the Harlequin Romances!"
Three penguins out of five. If you enjoy the Ring of Fire series, it's worth it.
This book should have been a romp. It has kidnappings, intrigue, narrow escapes, disguises, villains, heroes, and True Love. It should have been tight, with action flying left and right. The second half of the book is like that. The first half? A slog.
I blame Ms. DeMarce. She's a brilliant historian, no doubt. But the two books in this series that she's co-written have been bogged down by excessive detail. Ten pages of characters and four genealogies? Too much! There was too much time spent setting up why a convoy of people from Grantville had to go to the Palatinate. One was a mission to look into getting iron production restarted. This was merely a pretext for getting characters in place for the further events. Others were a downtimer looking to collect on her deceased husband's estate, the wife of the USE Navy's commander searching for funds for a school, etc. This was all secondary, and not important to the story. The reason for the trip was to put the characters into the action!
In stead we get almost 300 pages of detailed discussion of legal affairs, the inner workings of the mining cartels (including, I swear, a full page of nothing but a listing of the various towns and holdings in the Upper Palatinate. WHY?), and the minutiae of training teachers in 17th century Europe. Meantime, we slowly, ever so slowly, start to see the plot. But at least half of the first half of this book needed to be dumped and rewritten.
Once things get moving, the book becomes fun and the farcical romp it should have been. But you really can't hate a book that has a Spanish princling declare "Think of the songs! Think of the poems! Think of the Harlequin Romances!"
Three penguins out of five. If you enjoy the Ring of Fire series, it's worth it.
1632-verse
Date: 9 Nov 2009 07:00 (UTC)Re: 1632-verse
Date: 12 Nov 2009 04:12 (UTC)I could take the kidnappings and the romance or leave it; for me, the way 17th century people's heads worked, and the social and political problems of getting the mines back up and running, and finding financing to kickstart education, were what I found fascinating. Flint and De Marce have gotten me hooked. Between them and doing the research for my own 1632 stories, I've found myself mainlining: reading Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, and Adam Smith in their own words, not to mention working out the engineering problems of translating steam turbines and hydroelectric plants to 17th century materials.
As for the large cast of characters, you may be right. I found it a little overwhelming too, but then human relationships aren't my strong point. De Marce is a genealogist as well as a historian, though, and we're all grateful to her for keeping the demographics of the whole series believable.
Jack Carroll