Customer Reviews

1635: The Tangled Web (Ring of Fire)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I read a lot, and I read fast. This book took me nearly a week, because I either put it down to do something else, or I fell asleep.
As I normally gulp down the Ring of Fire books in one night or 2, with as few interruptions as I can manage, let me say that I was VERY disappointed with his book.
The characters and the plot are just not interesting - with the exception of one much-married beguiling rogue, I just don't like this book. At one point I realized I was drowning in an endless series of names of characters and families, and the explanations of them. It just seemed like it went on and on. If I see this writers name on a book, I just won't buy it unless I can pick up a real used bargain.
And that is the ONLY way I would advise anyone else to buy this - it is a waste of money.
Which is a shame, compared to Eric Flint's excellent, interesting, and thought-provoking writing for this series.

I just finished this and have to agree that its boring, uninteresting, and almost unreadable.

The author seems to have a propensity for going down long blind, and VERY boring alleys of convoluted and confusing family relationships, and in this case a disjointed story that makes little sense.

There's a LOT of talk, not very interesting, and no real action to break up the boredom.
The 1632 story is interesting, and possibly the best time travel tale ever written, certainly the biggest and most wide spread.
However, Flint needs to realize that not everyone can write good material in the 1632 universe.
This one wanders off into a singularly uninteresting maze and never returns.

My biggest indictment: When I'm reading a book that looses my interest, I tend to start skipping sentences or even entire paragraphs.
With this one I started skipping entire pages, and then multiple pages.

I'll continue to read Flint and the anthologies in the 1632 universe, but no more of this author.
Flint needs to realize that some things just don't work out, and Professional writers tend to be impressed with the skills of other authors, but may not see that they just don't impress the readers for who its all about.
These books aren't written to impress other writers, they're written to sell books to people who want to read the story.
When the story causes a buyer/reader to not want to read or buy anymore, its time to step back and reevaluate whether to continue.

In this case....Not.

Yet again another book in this series is a failure to be even remotely enjoyable. In fact, boring and inane are the words that come to mind. I think the majority of readers just aren't interested in hordes of minor characters and their boring doings and how they are related to each other. In fact, this book seems more a collection of weakly related short stories than a real integrated story. The main characters that most readers are interested in hardly get to make an apperance.

It's not Eric Flint's writing that's the problem. None of the books done solely by him or in collaboration with other authors has been anything other than stellar. I really hate to point fingers, but it's time someone at Baen wakes up to the fact that Virgina DeMarce might be a crackerjack researcher, but she hasn't got the touch to write entertaining long fiction. It's time for the publisher to step in and save this series.

I won't be buying any more books with her listed as an author, either prime or secondary, and I recommend others do the same if they dislike the trend that is showing in this series. If Baen wants anyone to be loyal to this series, Virgina DeMarce needs to be shown the door as an author and fast. She's already done enough damage. Stop her before she ruins even one more book.

While this book, and the prior one by Virginia DeMarce, are so boring that I was unwilling to invest the time to read them to their conclusions, I am thankful for all the good work she has done for the 1632 series. One of the features I so enjoy with the Eric-written stories is that they tend to be internally consistent and have rasonably good historic accuracy. Eric may have done much of that on his own, but I attribute much of it to Virginia. I have also assumed that Eric has restricted her in terms of writing about the main story and the central actors -- he has reserved that for himself. So her hands are tied, and we end up frustrated with the insignificant plot line, but also because her writing style is not as engaging. So, thank you Virginia for what you do contribute, but I too am not a fan of your writing.

I also think that it is very unfair of Eric to promote Virginia's works as moving the story line forward, when in fact that is often not the case, and he should know that her writing skills are not up to par. I have assumed that he is more interested in other series, and will milk the 1632 series for all its worth by writing a "real" story every few years, and hope that her stories keep the series alive. Maybe that is a good business model, but it does leave many readers not too happy.

So, as much as I like the 1632 series and main characters, I would not recommend purchasing this book nor any other from this author.

I am an avid fan of the Ring of Fire series and hoped for the best here.

Unfortunately, Mrs. DeMarce techniques seem unable keep the book interesting. While the various short stories are interlaced, they are also not about any character we care about - nor are any of the characters made interesting. Viewing a boring story from multiple angles doesn't help in the end.

Another reviewer had it correct: the multiple-married postal carrier is the most interesting and yet even his story seemed unfinished and barely went anywhere.

I think there are two main issues I have with the book:

1. In general, none of the characters evolve. Sure, they die or get married, but they, as people, never change. They are static characters with little to tell them apart.

2. The author uses a horrible technique - writing short scenes (one paragraph to a few pages), from different areas in the world, and/or with different characters. In the hands of a great writer one might get a feeling of flow and connectedness, but here it just breaks up the narrative into non-interesting bits that you are left wondering about: as in "why was it written at all".

Actually, I shouldn't have been surprised by my lack of enjoyment with this book. The other two books in the Ring of Fire series on the bottom of my enjoyment scale are "The Dreeson Incident" and "The Bavarian Crisis" - both of which she also had a hand in.

Maybe next book she will stop telling us about who everyone is related to and find an interesting bit of action or intrigue to write about.

I was going to end the review here, but then I remembered the summary on the back cover of the book. It, in part, reads "... continues the saga of the time lost Americans as seen through the eyes of both Americans and Europeans: from 'downtimers' marveling at the exhibits in a museum of the 20th century to a Lutheran minister trying to decide if the women's new apparel copied from the West Virginians is prohibited by scripture. ..." It goes on for another line or so.

I know a book is bad when I haven't a clue what these lines are referring to. I want to read the stories referred to here! But the closest we come is a story about a man looking at a mimeograph machine in a museum, figuring out how to downtime it, and then the outcome is referred to in a different story. Nothing about the rest of the museum, nothing about anything really. The museum was, maybe, 5 pages. Total. And we hear nothing of the other marvels on display. So the museum noted in the summary of the book on the back is a minor, minor scene. The book is a larger story having little to do with the museum.

This is just one example. Each line in the summary blurb is exactly like that though...

Sigh. (A frustrated sigh at that.)

Not sure why Victoria's style is so different between this book and her collaborations with Eric, but this book is the reason why I will skip buying her future contributions to the 1632 universe until after I have read them. 1632 is a series which will live and die from repeat readers - who DON'T need reams of ancillary filler background material. Don't try to explain the series to repeat readers, and new readers will be so overloaded with details and irrelevant conversation that they will never really turn on to the rest of the series.

This may have been one of the most boring books I have ever tried to read. Please I beg you, stop writing trivial junk and let the charactors do SOMETHING!!!

I confess that I love the 1632 series, but am not a fan of Virginia DeMarce. I find her entries impossible to wade thru. There is very little action and a tremendous amount of what I would call imaginary gossip in this book. If you liked her other entries, you will probably love this one. Could be that this is a strength of the 1632 series, the same events being examined from many perspectives. I prefer less relationship examination and more action.

I've been an avid reader of all the books in the series. As much as others seem to be complaining about 1635: The Dreeson Incident, I actually liked after I got into the plot. This collection of short novels and stories had me dropping the book after the first 2 sections, I found it to be extremely boring with none of the main characters from the other books and it seemed to me like there was alot of jumping in the timelines, making it very difficult to actually follow what was going on and how this was all playing out in the larger scheme of the series. I had pre-ordered this book because of the rest of the series and the cover making things look like something interesting was going to happen. I was wrong and got my hopes up for another good read, all I got though was another book going in the donation bin of the local library; I'm not keeping it with the rest of the books in the series in my bookcase.

I think it's safe to say that this book marks the end of the 1632verse. If the only author that is interested in writing for the series is a talentless pedantic hack who would be better suited selling turkey legs at a ren faire then it's time to bring this experiment in collaborative fiction to a conclusion.

Thanks Eric Flint and Dave Weber for some great books!