| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Product Description
1632 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 entire 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 group of armed miners to find out what happened and finds the road into town 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 attacked by 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.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Bill of Rights Explosion,
By
This review is from: 1632 (Assiti Shards) (Paperback)
Alternate history novels have been around for quite awhile, but most of them focus on the difference a single individual or a single decision will make. This book instead looks at what would happen if an entire town is transported back to the middle of 17th century Germany, during the middle of the Thirty Years War.The town in question is a quiet West Virginia town of about 3,000 which at one point subsisted on proceeds of its coal mine, now shut down, but which has left the legacy of a great number of the town's adult men being UMWA union members. When plopped down in Germany, the union's leader, Mike Stearn, effectively takes charge and begins the process of not only turning the town into a self-sufficient entity but also melding it into a major player into the politics of day. 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, its obviously well researched look at the politics and religious battles of the Europe of that age, an interesting look at the position of the Jews within this society, and its easy reading style. On the negative side, characterization, while adequate, is not very deep for anyone. The motif of 'love at first sight' is way overused. How the town makes the transition from 20th century technology to a stripped down mix of 18th and 19th century level is not covered in enough detail to make it convincing, which is a shame as this could have been one of the most interesting aspects of this novel. The ready acceptance by the German peasants of not only the technological marvels but also the concepts embodied by the Bill of Rights strained my suspension of disbelief mightily, even though it made an excellent theme for the novel. And finally the scene where the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, comes galloping on horseback to the rescue of the town's schoolchildren came across as both melodramatic and unnecessary. Still, like many novels that occupy this sub-genre, it all makes for a good, fun read, with an interesting look at the history and people of that time. --- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Cliche upon cliche,
By A Customer
This review is from: 1632 (The Assiti Shards) (Hardcover)
This is getting to be the greatest cliche of alternate history fiction: Small US community from the 20th/21st century displaced in time. After being suitably suitably decimated by Superior American Weapons, Tactics and Morale, the astounded inhabitants joyfully embrace Free Trade and The American Way. And everybody lives happily ever after. "1632" follows the formula from first to last page. The more lighthearted pulp fiction parts (the crusty old miner who just happens to have stored a M60 and untold crates of ammunition from his Vietnam days, the roleplaying teenagers who effortlessly turn into shining knights on motorbikes) is actually fun at times. The "serious" bits where 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.Unless writers of alternate history start varying this particular formula very soon, the entire sub-genre is in danger of dying from boredom.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An entertaining time-displacement tale.,
By
This review is from: 1632 (The Assiti Shards) (Hardcover)
"1632" continues the recent trend for stories involving contemporary communities displaced into the past, of which S.M.Stirling's Nantucket series is probably the best example. In this story, a West Virginian coal-mining community is displaced to central Germany in the middle of the Thirty Years' War, and we then see the impact of modern ideas (and weaponry) on the seventeenth century world, and vice versa. One may quibble at the authorial licence which arranged for the displaced zone to include both a power station and a coal mine, which makes the preservation of a technical culture a lot easier, but as Terry Pratchett says, "million to one chances happen nine times out of ten"! That said, Mr Flint tells an entertaining tale involving both transposed Americans and historical personages such as King Gustav II Adolf, Count Axel Oxenstierna, and the Holy Roman Empire generals Tilly and Wallenstein. May we hope for a sequel? N.B. The story involves some explicit sex scenes.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
