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Grantville Gazette | Rating | |
| C | |||
| Eric Flint | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Ring of Fire | 1632, 1633, 1634: The Baltic War, 1634: The Galileo Affair, 1634: The Ram Rebellion, 1634: The Bavarian Crisis, 1635: The Cannon Law, Ring of Fire, Grantville Gazette | ||
Eric Flint set in motion a rich and nearly unique milieu when he wrote 1632. It and its sequels have told a fascinating tale of a West Virginia town, Grantville, transported back nearly four hundred years, with specific effort made to keep the characters and technology realistic. But there is more going on than just the nain story of how the Americans are trying to live through the Thirty Years War. There are individual stories to be told, and some get told here.
Stories like the goodwill mission between the Americans and a Dutch painter that reaps some unexpected rewards. Or the tale of a young German girl's assimilation into the Grantville way of life. Or the cranky old vet pulled into the army once again. There's also one about a quartet of teens trying to start a business and one regarding a religious colloquy to set some new rules in the area near Grantville. All capped off with a trio of factual essays on how certain things would really work - or not - in 1632.
The stories are written with no small skill. And they all definitely fit within the setting. But all of them have some flaws to them, some quite serious. The last of the fictions, for instance, I found terribly boring, just plain dull. If the colloquy is as important as the characters claim to the political world, then fine, it should happen. But when the author herself declares it in the text to be boring and dull, she should also be wise enough to just skip over showing it and get to the verdict at the end. Further, in several places the story goes into some minute detail of history or politics. Some authors can make such minutae fascinating, but here it is just tedious. The second tale in the book, "Anna's Story," has no real plot. There's a surprisingly touching end to it, but I kept waiting for something to actually happen. But the only thing that does is the integration and acculturation of a bunch of downtimers to American life and vice versa for one elderly man. I even found myself disliking Flint's own contribution to the anthology. I found it too short, for one thing, ending just as I was getting settled into the story. For antoehr thing, the important parts of what's going on, the events that might actually influence the mainline story, are barely shown. They're used more to imply future developments than to show something actually happening.
The other two stories aren't bad. The main character in "Curio and Relic" has a gruff but quite likable personality that made the story fun to read, and the pages went by quickly. Unfortunately, it too suffers from a lack in the plot department. It seems to be focusing on establishing a character in the setting for use in later stories (and hopefully in the mainline plot, no doubt) rather than telling a tale of its own. Meanwhile, "The Sewing Circle" is quite good indeed. It has a plot, for one thing. It's not one that will have major repercussions in the milieu as a whole, but it is there and it is interesting. I particularly liked its tone, too. There's a smattering of humor thrown in there that is genuinely funny. (The explanation of the Federal Reserve system is particularly amusing, and the initial list of products the group might try to make was hilarious.) The author was a bit heavy on the summary narration, but somehow it works. Further, the characters are interesting, and there's even some conflict of the, "Can we really do this?" type.
The essays, meanwhile, are informative enough. They're meant to help tose who hope to write for the series, and no doubt they help get some facts straighened out. Unfortunately, they're all a bit dry. They're there to get information across, nothing more, and that is exactly what they do - nothing more.
The fiction portion of Grantville Gazette was written largely by amateurs. Most of the stories in it were submitted for the anthology Ring of Fire, but didn't quite make the cut. I frankly can see why, despite Flint's assurances that it wasn't due to quality. While the writing style and quality are excellent in all but the last, I found the stories the authors were trying to tell to be noticably deficient. Since none of the stories are crucial to the continuity of the setting, and the essays are really only useful if you intend to write in it, I'd honestly just recommend passing on this particular piece of the 1632 universe.
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