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The West Virginia town of Grantville, torn from the twentieth century and hurled back into seventeenth century Europe, has allied with Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, in the United States of Europe. So, when Gustavus invades Poland, managing to unite all the squabbling Polish factions into repelling the common enemy, the time-lost Americans have to worry about getting dragged into the fight along with the Swedish forces. But Mike Stearns has another problem. He was Prime Minister of the USE until he lost an election, and now he's one of Gustavus's generals; and he has demonstrated that he's very good at being a general. And he's about to really need all his military aptitude. Gretchen, who never saw a revolution she didn't like, has been arrested in Saxony, and is likely to be executed! The revolutionary groups which she has been working with are not about to let that happen, and suddenly there's rioting in the streets. So Gustavus orders Mike Stearns to go to Saxony and restore order. But he makes one mistake. He didn't tell Mike to take his troops along on the mission. But he didn't tell him not to, either...
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is the tenth book in a series in which a small American town is sent back from around the turn of the millennium to Germany in the middle of the 30 years war. The books in this series are identified with titles which are, or begin with, the 17th century year in which each book starts (e.g. 1632, 1633, etc) and it is sometimes known as the "Ring of Fire" or "Assiti Shards" series.
The "Ring of Fire" is how the inhabitants of Grantville described the event which brought their town back 370 years in time and a few thousand miles in space. The Assiti were the race whose thoughtless actions, described in the first book as akin to "criminal negligence," caused that event, though we are told in the first novel in the series that no human will ever learn this.
Some of the books in this series were just written by Eric Flint but most have one or more co-authors such as David Weber. They differ very greatly in their style and focus, and I gather I am not the only reader who enjoyed some of them very much more than others. The five which I did enjoy and can recommend to others, which include this one, can be read in sequence and give you a reasonable overview of the history of the very different seventeenth century which Grantville's arrival in Germany in 1632 creates in the stories.
Eric Flint himselves describes these same five books as the "Main line" or spinal cord of the series to date in the afterword to this volume. They are:
1632 (Ring of Fire)
1633
1634: The Baltic War
1635: The Eastern Front (Ring of Fire)
This book, "1636: The Saxon Uprising"
The complete list of novels in the series to date is:
1) 1632
2) 1633
3) 1634: The Galileo Affair
4) 1634: The Baltic War
5) 1634: The Bavarian Crisis
6) 1634: The Ram rebellion
7) 1635: The Dreeson Incident
8) 1635: The Cannon Law
9) 1635: The Eastern Front
10) 1636: The Saxon uprising
I've counted "The Ram rebellion" in this list, though Eric Flint himself describes it as "An oddball volume which has some of the characteristics of an anthology and some of the characteristics of a novel."
There are also several short story/novella collections set in this alternative 17th century including "Ring of Fire," "1635: The Tangled Web" (by Virginia DeMarce) and a number of books in the "Grantville Gazette" series.
Flint has also written a book in which a second similar event hits the 21st century world which Grantville has left behind a few years later, called Time Spike.
The title of "1636: The Saxon Uprising" is something of a misnomer: that title seems to infer that radicals in Saxony start a civil war by rising against the government, when in fact what happens in the book is almost the exact reverse. The book is set after the inhabitants of Grantville have founded a new and reasonably democratic "United States of Europe" covering most of modern Germany with the aid of an alliance with with the Swedish King, Gustavus Adolphus. At first it appears that they have defeated all their enemies and reshaped Europe.
Unfortunately part of the price of living in a democracy is that sometimes the majority of other citizens vote for someone other than the person you want. Thinking themselves safe and able to go back to the comfortably familiar, the electorate of the USE voted out the Grantville leader, Mike Stearns, as Prime Minister of the USE and replaced him with a moderate aristocrat, William Wettin.
In the previous book, "1635: The Eastern Front" Gustavus Adolphus decided he didn't want to lose Mike Stearns' talents, so he appointed Mike a general and placed him in charge of a division of troops.
Wettin's election might not have been too disastrous had the King been around to keep things under control: unfortunately Gustavus managed to get himself seriously wounded during a war against Poland.
At the start of this book, Gustavus has been in a coma for months, and there is serious doubt whether he will ever recover. The internal forces of reaction within Sweden and the USE appear to be preparing a coup.
This puts Mike Stearns in a very difficult position: he's in command of a division of effective and loyal troops who will undoubtedly back him if he tries to oppose the reactionaries by force. But how can you build democracy by resorting to force of arms when it produces a result you don't like?
I did enjoy this book, which has some very good humour and some clever ideas. The quality of the historical reseach and imagination in this series is extremely patchy, excellent in places and rather poor in others.
Earlier books in the series made out Charles I of England, who admittedly wasn't the most brilliant man who ever lived, out to be a far bigger idiot than he ever was in life, while presenting a view of Oliver Cromwell which appears be based on rose-tinted spectacles.
This one has a few lines about the Princes in the Tower which are factually inaccurate (in particular, contrary to the statement in this book, Henry VII himself didn't directly accuse Richard III of murdering them, but plenty of other people did, starting with the Lord Chancellor of France during a speech to the French parliament made while Richard was still on the throne.)
But this book and the other four I have recommended are good fun.
If you enjoy this story of a modern community sent back many years in time, you might also enjoy S.M. Stirling's Nantucket trilogy in which that island is sent much further back by a similar event. The Nantucket trilovy consists of:
Island in the Sea of Time
Against the Tide of Years (Nantucket)
On the Oceans of Eternity (Nantucket).
The "Ring of Fire" is how the inhabitants of Grantville described the event which brought their town back 370 years in time and a few thousand miles in space. The Assiti were the race whose thoughtless actions, described in the first book as akin to "criminal negligence," caused that event, though we are told in the first novel in the series that no human will ever learn this.
Some of the books in this series were just written by Eric Flint but most have one or more co-authors such as David Weber. They differ very greatly in their style and focus, and I gather I am not the only reader who enjoyed some of them very much more than others. The five which I did enjoy and can recommend to others, which include this one, can be read in sequence and give you a reasonable overview of the history of the very different seventeenth century which Grantville's arrival in Germany in 1632 creates in the stories.
Eric Flint himselves describes these same five books as the "Main line" or spinal cord of the series to date in the afterword to this volume. They are:
1632 (Ring of Fire)
1633
1634: The Baltic War
1635: The Eastern Front (Ring of Fire)
This book, "1636: The Saxon Uprising"
The complete list of novels in the series to date is:
1) 1632
2) 1633
3) 1634: The Galileo Affair
4) 1634: The Baltic War
5) 1634: The Bavarian Crisis
6) 1634: The Ram rebellion
7) 1635: The Dreeson Incident
8) 1635: The Cannon Law
9) 1635: The Eastern Front
10) 1636: The Saxon uprising
I've counted "The Ram rebellion" in this list, though Eric Flint himself describes it as "An oddball volume which has some of the characteristics of an anthology and some of the characteristics of a novel."
There are also several short story/novella collections set in this alternative 17th century including "Ring of Fire," "1635: The Tangled Web" (by Virginia DeMarce) and a number of books in the "Grantville Gazette" series.
Flint has also written a book in which a second similar event hits the 21st century world which Grantville has left behind a few years later, called Time Spike.
The title of "1636: The Saxon Uprising" is something of a misnomer: that title seems to infer that radicals in Saxony start a civil war by rising against the government, when in fact what happens in the book is almost the exact reverse. The book is set after the inhabitants of Grantville have founded a new and reasonably democratic "United States of Europe" covering most of modern Germany with the aid of an alliance with with the Swedish King, Gustavus Adolphus. At first it appears that they have defeated all their enemies and reshaped Europe.
Unfortunately part of the price of living in a democracy is that sometimes the majority of other citizens vote for someone other than the person you want. Thinking themselves safe and able to go back to the comfortably familiar, the electorate of the USE voted out the Grantville leader, Mike Stearns, as Prime Minister of the USE and replaced him with a moderate aristocrat, William Wettin.
In the previous book, "1635: The Eastern Front" Gustavus Adolphus decided he didn't want to lose Mike Stearns' talents, so he appointed Mike a general and placed him in charge of a division of troops.
Wettin's election might not have been too disastrous had the King been around to keep things under control: unfortunately Gustavus managed to get himself seriously wounded during a war against Poland.
At the start of this book, Gustavus has been in a coma for months, and there is serious doubt whether he will ever recover. The internal forces of reaction within Sweden and the USE appear to be preparing a coup.
This puts Mike Stearns in a very difficult position: he's in command of a division of effective and loyal troops who will undoubtedly back him if he tries to oppose the reactionaries by force. But how can you build democracy by resorting to force of arms when it produces a result you don't like?
I did enjoy this book, which has some very good humour and some clever ideas. The quality of the historical reseach and imagination in this series is extremely patchy, excellent in places and rather poor in others.
Earlier books in the series made out Charles I of England, who admittedly wasn't the most brilliant man who ever lived, out to be a far bigger idiot than he ever was in life, while presenting a view of Oliver Cromwell which appears be based on rose-tinted spectacles.
This one has a few lines about the Princes in the Tower which are factually inaccurate (in particular, contrary to the statement in this book, Henry VII himself didn't directly accuse Richard III of murdering them, but plenty of other people did, starting with the Lord Chancellor of France during a speech to the French parliament made while Richard was still on the throne.)
But this book and the other four I have recommended are good fun.
If you enjoy this story of a modern community sent back many years in time, you might also enjoy S.M. Stirling's Nantucket trilogy in which that island is sent much further back by a similar event. The Nantucket trilovy consists of:
Island in the Sea of Time
Against the Tide of Years (Nantucket)
On the Oceans of Eternity (Nantucket).
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I picked up the first book in this series purely on speculation and was hooked. Between the books and the Grantville Gazette on line a whole new dimension in Alternative History unfolds. Characters are allowed to develope and blossom. I await eacf further instalment either in book form or on line with baited breath.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
13 reviews
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful
1626: The Saxon Uprising
27 Mar 2011
Format:Hardcover
I read this as an ebook and not as the hardcover.
For the last few books, the Assiti Shards series had been all over the place. It felt like too much was happening in too short a time - a few decades worth of war happened in 4 short years with internal social convulsions thrown in between. I was thinking about giving up on the series.
Then, the last book, The Eastern Front, threw in a seriously unexpected curveball.
From that plot twist, this book started up with a mess that turned into an unexpectedly fun novel. This one felt like a return to the first few books in the series. There are multiple story lines occurring at the same time with many of the usual suspects but without that many new characters added in. It resolved itself nicely while leaving open a handful of story lines to continue in the next books of the series.
For the last few books, the Assiti Shards series had been all over the place. It felt like too much was happening in too short a time - a few decades worth of war happened in 4 short years with internal social convulsions thrown in between. I was thinking about giving up on the series.
Then, the last book, The Eastern Front, threw in a seriously unexpected curveball.
From that plot twist, this book started up with a mess that turned into an unexpectedly fun novel. This one felt like a return to the first few books in the series. There are multiple story lines occurring at the same time with many of the usual suspects but without that many new characters added in. It resolved itself nicely while leaving open a handful of story lines to continue in the next books of the series.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
The Second Half, 6TSU
3 May 2011
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is really just the second half of a 783-page novel that was judged too long for one volume, so it was split into two. The first half was published as 1635: The Eastern Front (5TEF). It is the fifth mainline volume of the 163x hypernovel, The first four are 1632, 1633, 1634: The Baltic War (4TBW), and 5TEF. You will enjoy all of them more if you read them in order.
6TSU begins with Erik Haakansson Hand's first sight of Gustaf II Adolf (G2A) on his sickbed in Berlin, then flashes back to Haakansson's visit with James Nichols in Magdeburg. In Dresden, Gretchen Richter fills the vacuum in command of preparations to prevent Johan Banér from entering and taking control of the city (and probably sacking it). Gretchen and Tata become the real leaders of Dresden as Banér puts the city under siege. David Bartley and Jeff Higgins launch the `Becky,' military scrip to buy supplies with when their supply of cash runs out.
Ulrik and Kristina arrive via ironclad at Luebeck, and Admiral Simpson persuades them to stay in Luebeck until a suitable arrival in Magdeburg can be arranged. They have no intention of going to Berlin as Oxensteirna has virtually ordered them to. Oxenstierna is working on a counter-revolution to restore all the powers and privileges of the nobility, and the most conservative members of the Crown Loyalist Party have been invited to convene in Berlin for that purpose. Ox knows that he must complete his counter-revolution before G2A recovers (if he ever does), so he plays fast and loose with the USE Constitution, ignoring, among other things, the unmet requirement for a quorum.
There is mention of a wrong-but-understandable turnabout-is-fair-play event, "Operation Kristallnacht," a sort of reverse pogrom against anti-semites, which made it clear that the CoC would not tolerate anti-Jewish rabble-rousing. But two wrongs don't make a right, and even vicious fools have a right to their opinions, however asinine, and to free speech, however offensive.
The climax of all this involves a major battle in a blinding snowstorm. To avoid spoilers, I won't say more, except that this is one terrific book, highly recommended. Should be 6 or 7 stars.
A major character is Rebecca Abrabanel, a fictional member of a prominent historical Sephardic Jewish family. Seeing the name only in print, I had mispronounced it (to myself) with the first two syllables as in abracadabra. I asked a rabbi, and he told me the correct pronunciation is uh-BRAHV-uh-Nell. Note that the second b, as is often the case in Spanish, is pronounced like v.
watziznayme@gmail.com
6TSU begins with Erik Haakansson Hand's first sight of Gustaf II Adolf (G2A) on his sickbed in Berlin, then flashes back to Haakansson's visit with James Nichols in Magdeburg. In Dresden, Gretchen Richter fills the vacuum in command of preparations to prevent Johan Banér from entering and taking control of the city (and probably sacking it). Gretchen and Tata become the real leaders of Dresden as Banér puts the city under siege. David Bartley and Jeff Higgins launch the `Becky,' military scrip to buy supplies with when their supply of cash runs out.
Ulrik and Kristina arrive via ironclad at Luebeck, and Admiral Simpson persuades them to stay in Luebeck until a suitable arrival in Magdeburg can be arranged. They have no intention of going to Berlin as Oxensteirna has virtually ordered them to. Oxenstierna is working on a counter-revolution to restore all the powers and privileges of the nobility, and the most conservative members of the Crown Loyalist Party have been invited to convene in Berlin for that purpose. Ox knows that he must complete his counter-revolution before G2A recovers (if he ever does), so he plays fast and loose with the USE Constitution, ignoring, among other things, the unmet requirement for a quorum.
There is mention of a wrong-but-understandable turnabout-is-fair-play event, "Operation Kristallnacht," a sort of reverse pogrom against anti-semites, which made it clear that the CoC would not tolerate anti-Jewish rabble-rousing. But two wrongs don't make a right, and even vicious fools have a right to their opinions, however asinine, and to free speech, however offensive.
The climax of all this involves a major battle in a blinding snowstorm. To avoid spoilers, I won't say more, except that this is one terrific book, highly recommended. Should be 6 or 7 stars.
A major character is Rebecca Abrabanel, a fictional member of a prominent historical Sephardic Jewish family. Seeing the name only in print, I had mispronounced it (to myself) with the first two syllables as in abracadabra. I asked a rabbi, and he told me the correct pronunciation is uh-BRAHV-uh-Nell. Note that the second b, as is often the case in Spanish, is pronounced like v.
watziznayme@gmail.com
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Pleasant return to action, but Flint still needs to cut some of the internalization
10 April 2011
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
First off, the book is good, worth reading and delivers on the promises in Eastern Front. The book is actually far more polished with only ten or so major typos, and only one incident where a repeated passage slipped past the editing. These are minor things that make me think Baen is paying attention to the process.
Flint has a lovely convention he starts using once the action gets rolling that breaks in the moment tension starts to build. Reactions from around the Universe to the events playing out in the USE are welcome, comments about one of the nations toward the end are pithy, and the build outs of all of the other plot lines, help to remind us that we didn't read Cannon Law for nothing and that eventually we might return to some of the other threads in this world.
The main plot line? The characters ruthlessly and efficiently, pull off exactly what they said they'd do if it came to this. All the way back to just before Stearns leaves office, he said this was coming and Flint delivers it all in a style that is entertaining and strongly paced.
Why this missing star this time?
Unnecessary narrative summary is the bane of Eric Flint's writing. There are 5, solid essays in this book, all about who should rule and the eventual rise of republican governments. No fewer than three characters consider these as they go about their business. One can be dealt with, but the other four should have found the waste basket or a small red balloon in the editing pane of Word. Flint is good at blending narrative summary into his works, except that he uses it too often to beat people over the head with a particular political concept. Each book Flint writes in this series has a bit to preach, but sometimes it seems like we're getting five Sundays worth of sermon, and it slows the books down.
If you compare my other reviews of the 1632 series, you'll see several complaints I've made about various pieces, but other than the above, meant to be constructive criticism, this is the only real weakness to this book and to Flint's craft.
Flint has a lovely convention he starts using once the action gets rolling that breaks in the moment tension starts to build. Reactions from around the Universe to the events playing out in the USE are welcome, comments about one of the nations toward the end are pithy, and the build outs of all of the other plot lines, help to remind us that we didn't read Cannon Law for nothing and that eventually we might return to some of the other threads in this world.
The main plot line? The characters ruthlessly and efficiently, pull off exactly what they said they'd do if it came to this. All the way back to just before Stearns leaves office, he said this was coming and Flint delivers it all in a style that is entertaining and strongly paced.
Why this missing star this time?
Unnecessary narrative summary is the bane of Eric Flint's writing. There are 5, solid essays in this book, all about who should rule and the eventual rise of republican governments. No fewer than three characters consider these as they go about their business. One can be dealt with, but the other four should have found the waste basket or a small red balloon in the editing pane of Word. Flint is good at blending narrative summary into his works, except that he uses it too often to beat people over the head with a particular political concept. Each book Flint writes in this series has a bit to preach, but sometimes it seems like we're getting five Sundays worth of sermon, and it slows the books down.
If you compare my other reviews of the 1632 series, you'll see several complaints I've made about various pieces, but other than the above, meant to be constructive criticism, this is the only real weakness to this book and to Flint's craft.
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