Customer Reviews

1632

5 star:		(96)
4 star:		(53)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

Basically, this book is about a coal-mining town in West Virginia which is mysteriously transported to Germany at the time of the Thirty Years War. This theme has been developed before, going back to Mark Twain (or maybe further). To my knowledge, S.M. Stirling was the first major writer to move a whole community back to another time, with his Nantucket Series, and now Eric Flint seeks to get his version in. I am a fan of this genre, so I expected to enjoy this book, and I did. One way that it is different from most of these stories is that it focuses on the "little people"--The movers and shakers of this book are not professors or military officers or big-time politicians. The hero is a failed boxer who is a minor union official. On the other hand, the book is filled with affectionate praise for King Gustavus Adolphus. Gustavus Adolphus was a real historical figure, and if you don't know who he is, don't worry, you will know when you finish the book! I enjoyed the book, think most who are interested by this idea will enjoy it. Only criticism I have are that too much time is spent with the time travellers offstage, describing the Battle of Breitenfield, a real historical battle. Some may be disappointed that a minimum of time is spent describing clever technological improvisations--These seem to be a staple of this genre, but there isn't much of it here. If you enjoyed this book, I'd look up H. Beam Piper's LORD KALVAN OF OTHERWHEN, S.M. Stirling's ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME, and L. Sprague deCamp's LEST DARKNESS FALL.

I love time-travel stories... particularly when they're done well. In "1632" Eric Flint shows solid research, believable characters and gripping action, all combining in a tasty stew. He makes his people -- both 21st-century West Virginians and 17th-century Germans -- live and breathe. The plight of the castaways will keep you glued to the page, and the action will bring you to the edge of your seat. Bravo! Buy this book!

Time travel stories have been a staple of Science Fiction essentially forever. The plot device of a modern man displaced into a historical era is a popular one, and traces its immediate lineage to Mark Twain's A CONNETICUTT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT. While always great fun these stories tend to push the bounds of credulity when it come to the introduction of modern technology, and they frequently fall apart toward the end for that reason. 1632 manages to remain faintly plausable throughout. Just how historically reasonable its plot may be is open to question, but it manages not to jar the reader too badly while he is engrossed in the tale. The characters are mostly well drawn, with the exception of one cardboard cut-out whose presence does not materially detract from the book. the action is brisk and (at least to my non-military eye) believable in context. Most importantly the book is just plain fun to read. The author has a good command of human emotion and motives, as well as seeming to know his history.

If this sub-genera is one that you like I heartily recommend this example. If you are unfamilliar with the whole time-traveler gig you could do much worse than this book as an introduction.

This is not traditional alternate history (how did things develop on a different line?) so much as it is transposed history--analyzing the impact of a transplanted culture. The time/place of both were shrewdly chosen. As a Ph.D in early modern Europe, I like it; as someone who works in coal mine workers' compensation programs (and wanted to name our oldest son Gustavus Adolphus!), my husband liked it after I insisted that he read it; as a man who stayed home to keep a rural community running, my brother liked it also, after I insisted that he read it. It's not just a remarkably good story -- though that is the case. As a possible history, it works.

What if...a modern West Virginia mining town ended up in the middle of Germany during the Thirty-Years war? That's what happens in this well-written, well plotted book by Eric Flint.

Eric Flint has taken well-drawn characters, an excellent plot, and a good understanding of human nature to create what is going to be one of my all-time favorite books. He is now on my "automatic buy everything he writes" list.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to read.

In this novel, a town in West Virginia suddenly gets picked up by a cosmic "Ring of Fire," and is suddenly transported back in time to the middle of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, in the Seventeenth Century. The scientific aspects of this event are mostly glossed over in a brief prologue -- it's supposed to be the doing of a band of irresponsible aliens. That hardly figures into the story at all, however. The main point of reading this book is to get your face rubbed in a certain robust brand of populist political philosophy, with a lot of military action thrown in for good measure. If you like Robert Heinlein's more militaristic writings, you will love "1632."

The little town of West Virginians must survive in an incredibly hostile environment, as refugees flood into their territory. Outside, one of the bloodiest wars of the past millenium rages, as the forces of feudalism clash with the emerging forces of freedom of religion, and nationalism. Eric Flint has astutely recognized that the time was ripe in the 1630s for many concepts fundamental to American democracy, and out of these concepts he has fashioned a terrific tale. The Americans adrift in a strange land must not only survive, but try to ensure that the world they have landed in might become a better place for their having been there... The militaristic component of this story can get to be a bit much at times. There are a LOT of rousing cheers, and high-spirited charges... Probably my favorite character is the daughter of a Sephardic Jewish family, whose incredibly cultivated mind comes to be a major asset to the little town of lost Americans.

A few reviewers here have noted that Flint's writing style isn't overly sophisticated. Lighten up. Many people in this country haven't been preposterously overeducated enough to have opinions about things like that, and many of the characters in his story are of that very background. If you want your ideas to meet with a wide audience, maybe it isn't so wrong to keep your writing style simple enough that regular folks can understand what you're saying.

If you enjoy this kind of story, let me quickly recommend "An Island in the Sea of Time," by... I cannot recall the author's name, but if you can find the book, you should remember his name, because he's really good. Michael Crichton's "Timeline" is another great read, in a very similar way, as is L. Sprague de Camp's "Lest Darkness Fall." If you are excited by the kind of IDEAS in Eric Flint's book, as opposed to the story per se, you should think about reading "A People's History of the United States," by Howard Zinn, or "The Federalist Papers," edited by James Madison.

This is an unusual book, particularly in the time-travel/alternate history field, which is littered with winning Confederate States and the like, reflecting attitudes which would have suited Adolf Hitler. Many of the reviews have pointed out the one superb feature of this book: it's told from the point of view of the ordinary citizen. And it is relatively free of gratuitous violence. Unfortunately, it is not quite free of gratuitous sex, but at least the sort of abuse you come across in this sub-genre is absent. Still, the author was obviously attempting something very difficult: This is not just the usual `we Americans can beat them' sort of book. It's a book about why the Americans, who are outnumbered, can win. It is a book about what is valuable in Western Democracy. Essentially this is a book about politics behind history, made pleasant and easy to read, by giving it a good story-line. It's one of the few sf books you'll buy this year that will give you a good read and give some uplift and some insights. A few reviewers have complained about the short sentences and simple vocabulary. I can't say I find this a fault: if anything one of the problems with `new wave' Science Fiction was that authors tried to show it was `literature' with Dickensian sentences. This just highlights these authors' ignorance about the trend in great literature since Conrad: the more difficult the concept, the simpler the English. The length of the sentence has been getting shorter for the all of the twentieth century. Try Dickens compared to Henry James if you don't believe me! Flint is trying to write about something complex and dry as dust: the politics behind history. He succeeds remarkably well in a very readable story. He does have a very annoying habit of using the same phrases again and again, and his Battle of Breitenfeld chapter was the one time he let his `history professor' persona out of the closet. Fortunately it is a very short chapter or I'd take a star away from him. But, on the whole: definitely a `Buy'. You won't find a book on the effects of socio-political evolution in a more attractive package.

This book is as flawed as Mark Twain's original in the "What If" genre, and every bit as much a rollicking, rip-roaring good read! I ate the whole thing in one sitting!

Some reviewers have panned 1632 for "suspends disbelief" and "too pat". I fully agree, but what are they reading fantasy for if it must be fully believable? The beauty of Fantasy-SF is that it allows us to examine important values or principles isolated from the environment where they developed.

Had I been the author, I would have spent more time with logistics. If an army fights on its stomach, as Napoleon said, then it is also true that a society survives on its supply chain. I would worry about Latex for the pick-up tires, brass for the rifle reloads, petroleum for automotive technologies and a plastics/chemical industry. I would look at copper, vacuum technology, smelting, glass, gunpowder, paper, textiles, machine tools, etc.; all the fundamentals on which our civilization relies.

But I didn't write it, and I have had several days to deliciously fill in the details for myself. To me, the real test of a good read is how long it takes you to get involved and how long it lingers after you close the book. On both fronts, 1632 comes out first rate, I was hooked about the time the Union Boss cut his fists on a pikeman's jaw, and I have put myself to sleep for several nights doing my own what-ifs on its story line.

I have been so moved that I can't look at another of my favorite authors until I read 1633, fearing, at the same time, that it will degenerate into formula prose and disappoint.

I gave 1632 four stars because the good guys are too good and the bad guys, while bad enough, are incompetent. There was no real danger of danger, and only straw men stood between the town and happy-ever-after.

That said, this is the most readable book I have consumed in several years!

Although I read a LOT of science fiction of all types (fantasy, military, and alternate history), I somehow had never read anything by Eric Flint before, but the idea of a whole town from modern-day West Virginia being transplanted into 1632 Germany -- in the middle of the 30 Years War -- intrigued me. I was afraid that this book was going to be yet another of those that trash West Virginia and her citizens, but I was happy to find I was wrong as well as vastly entertained for several hours.

Mike Stearns, along with most of the residents of Grantville, WV, was attending his sister's wedding reception in the cafeteria of the local high school when suddenly a brilliant, white light flashed through all the windows, the ground shook, and the power went off. Mike, his family members, friends, and colleagues naturally think there has been an explosion, but when they start looking around they are shocked to find they aren't in West Virginia -- or even the United States -- anymore; in fact, they aren't even in the same century! What happened? No one knows. Can they get back "home"? Probably not. What can they do? Survive.

Seventeenth-century Germany is a bloody battlefield where kings, princes, mercenaries, and peasants die by the thousands; unfortunately, though, it's the richest (not the best or even bravest) leaders who usually win. Murder, rape, religious persecution, rule by a hereditary nobility, and army induction at swordpoint are the way of life for the average person. (You've got to admit that "Join or die" is a VERY effective recruiting slogan.) The right to do as they are told is about the only right common people have -- much to the shock and dismay of their new neighbors from the future, who consider themselves "common people" as well. The term "culture shock" really doesn't cover the American's attitudes when exposed to the lifestyle the German peasants take for granted; it certainly doesn't even begin to cover the German's reactions when they are faced with the behavior and attitudes of these hard-working, stubborn, opinionated, patriotric, Bill-of-Rights-loving, coal miners from a small town in central West Virginia -- especially the behavior (and dress!) of the modern-day females. When these new neighbors -- with their "revolutionary" ideas of equality and tolerance and their modern weapons and medicine -- proceed to help the beleagured cities around them, well . . . history will never be the same again.

Although I wish the author had spent more time on the struggles of the citizens of Grantville to come to terms with their new situation and the formation of the "new" United States (with only the State of Grantville) and its government, I enjoyed this book so much that I went out and bought four more books by Eric Flint. By blending authentic historical figures with the fictional characters in this book, he makes the actions of ALL the people in this story -- improbable plot and all -- come alive with tales of bravery and cowardace, strategy and warfare, honor and dishonor, as well as romance and adventure. The fact that he does it with humor and WITHOUT continuing the sterotype of West Virginians as poor, ignorant, bigoted, narrow-minded, incestuous hillbillies makes it even better. BUY (don't borrow) this book -- this kind of writing should be rewarded!

Don't be fooled. Despite the vivid battle scenes, this is not a war novel. Despite the excruciating accuracy and cameo (and starring)appearances by historic figures, this is not a history lesson. Don't be sidetracked by the political theory or by the discussions of 17th-20th century technology. The story isn't about civilization and savages. I thought at first that this was a well-disguised romance novel set in a small town in crisis. But I've been reading it over (and over) and I've come to a different conclusion. 1632 is a novel about humanity at its worst and at its best. The story challenges the reader to recognize that the best people are ordinary folks. And that we can be the best, too.