Another disappointing book in the Ring of Fire series

1636: The Atlantic Encounter by Eric Flint

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Well, at least this was better than the last one.

The problem here was that the novel didn't have much of a plot, instead, it was a series of encounters that read like a bad tourism video. The underlying concept is a not-so-secret mission sent by one of the states in the USE to scout out the situation in North America in search of allies against the French.

The characters are moderately interesting, although sorely underdeveloped, the situations are all pretty bland, and worst of all, absolutely nothing is resolved at the end of the book. It's just filled with missed opportunities for anything resembling dramatic tension.

As an example, there is one character, a spy for the French, who needs to follow the USE crew to Virginia. He decides to steal the identity of an indentured servant and travel in his place. We've learned that in the colony they are in, there is one man who has become a sport of crime lord. What I was expected was a scene where the spy, with almost nothing to his name, has to bargain for this favor and ends up making promises that might come back to haunt him later. Instead, it all happens off-stage. Even the book's climax is a letdown.

This would have been much better off serialized in the Grantville Gazette series.



View all my reviews