Goddamn it, 1632 is bad

[Thanas]

Anyway, 1634 - The Galileo Affair. And it opens up with quite the nice summary of how awesome the americans are.

The second duel, a more formal affair, was worse. Having been accused of cowardice by relying on unfairly superior American firearms, Harry had chosen a different weapon. Another American one, true, but hardly something that could be labeled unfair—a very large knife which he called a "Bowie knife." He had even grandly allowed his opponent to retain his rapier.

The choice had obviated his opponent's greater skill with swordsmanship. Harry had had no intention of trying to match him. He'd simply managed to avoid the first lunge and grappled with his opponent, Bowie knife against main gauche. Thereafter, fighting with knives at close quarters, those qualities which Harry possessed in abundance—great athletic ability and an outlook sanguine enough to be the envy of any Mongol khan—had come to the fore. The end result had been thoroughly fatal and incredibly messy.

Are you freaking kidding me? Some American, with no formal fight training, took on a man with a bowie knife and won? Especially as the guy who he fought would most likely have spent a lifetime practicing it? But wait, it gets worse. The men he was fighting was using a rapier and a parrying dagger. How could you get inside it, especially with no shield? And with no training in swordfighting?

But to top it off, apparently the guy is a love god as well.

Now that he was in the presence of the cardinal, Mazarini suppressed his sigh. Hopefully, Harry Lefferts would be gone from Paris and on his way back to Grantville before the very wealthy and very belligerent Fasciotti brothers—all five of them—discovered that their sister had been dishonored and came to Paris from Rome to seek satisfaction. There would be no duels, dealing with the Fasciotti. Hiring assassins came as naturally to them as hiring servants. All the more so since the sister in question was not complaining about the episode herself. Awkward, that.

Yeah, right.

First chapter and I already feel the urge for whiskey. Bad omen, that.Oh, and we got Mazzarin admiring the civilians of Grantville for beating back the croats. So little space, so much wanking.

Again, a good chapter about Richelieu and Mazarin destroyed by Ameriwank.



Chapter two - Assassination attempt on Mazarin, who swears "Motherfucker".


Chapter four - Is Harry Lefferts the newest Mary Sue? Everybody likes him, he is awesome, great at political minds and deadly with a knife. Mark stearns 1.2?
Also:

Granted, since Wallenstein's recent rebellion, Bohemia had become something of a bright spot. But little Bohemia was scarcely going to do more than dent the CPE's need for foreign trade.

If Bohemia was so little and insignificant, doesn't that make Wallenstein the man with the greatest Napoleon complex ever, especially regarding what went on in the Wallenstein Gambit.


Chapter 5 - bad german alert. It looks like Flint forgot that the pipe is female in German.

Chapter 6 - apparently there is still enough meat around that barbecues are still common. Really, what? Also, suddenly Mike Stearns acknowledges that there are many spies in Grantville. Sadly, they must have been the most incompetent spies ever for the Americans still pull off things that any decent spy network should have scuttled. Oh, and the new dollar signs. The horror.

Frank could live with an eight-point buck as the central symbol on the one-dollar bill, hands kneading dough for a five-dollar bill and a loaf of bread for a ten-dollar bill, even if he thought the puns were pretty outrageous. But, even for his dad, putting Johnny Cash on the twenty-dollar bill was going over the edge.

[Zaune]

Actually, that quote about the new currency is the best laugh I've had all day.

[Thanas]

Actually, that quote about the new currency is the best laugh I've had all day.

But as actual currency?

[Zaune]

Compared to this?

Hell yes.

[Mr Bean]

Hey put the old hippy in charge of the money supply shit like that tends to happen.

[Kingmaker]

The choice had obviated his opponent's greater skill with swordsmanship. Harry had had no intention of trying to match him. He'd simply managed to avoid the first lunge and grappled with his opponent, Bowie knife against main gauche. Thereafter, fighting with knives at close quarters, those qualities which Harry possessed in abundance—great athletic ability and an outlook sanguine enough to be the envy of any Mongol khan—had come to the fore. The end result had been thoroughly fatal and incredibly messy.

Aside from grossly misrepresenting fencing--no competent duelist is going to throw everything into one lunge--Mr. Flint has apparently decided to overlook the fact that a trained duelist would have already been familiar with grappling and knife fighting as foundational skills for swordplay. But People Who Built America herp derp.

apparently there is still enough meat around that barbecues are still common. Really, what?

West Virginia is one of the beef capitals of the world. Haven't you heard? 70 head of cattle per capita. And one of the most notable qualities of West Virginia beef is the complete lack of need for refrigeration. Why yes sir, that stuff will stay good from now until judgement day just sitting on your kitchen windowsill. Is any mention made of the people of Grantsville reducing their caloric intake at all? Or do they continue stuffing themselves like natives of the late 20th century in spite only having access to 17th century food supplies?

[Thanas]

Aside from grossly misrepresenting fencing--no competent duelist is going to throw everything into one lunge--Mr. Flint has apparently decided to overlook the fact that a trained duelist would have already been familiar with grappling and knife fighting as foundational skills for swordplay. But People Who Built America herp derp.

Yes to all of that. But even more importantly - modern Americans certainly do not train with the bowie knife to kill people. In fact, I doubt the vast majority of them would even get into a duel. But here they just answer challenges by known troublemakers etc. without any problem. It is not just the unrealistic fights - it is the whole mindset.

Or do they continue stuffing themselves like natives of the late 20th century in spite only having access to 17th century food supplies?

I do not know, but the fact that some of them are still described as "rotund" seems to rather suggest that apparently food is still plentiful.

However, the stories themselves are not consistent. For example, in the Ring of Fire story (the one about chips) you get the image that food is scarce - potatoes are rationed etc. However, in this book you have barbecues. And not just a barbecue aka an entire family shares one small chicken or so, but no, the story explicitly mentions ribs and (multiple) chicken pieces.

[Mr Bean]

Simple enough, Ring of Fire was written and published after Galileo. Not until 1634: The Baltic War & 1634: The Bavarian Crisis do you see the full on shift to it's the 90's in the 1630's. Ram was written before RoF collection as well. But as I've said several times before, the later we go in the series the much closer to historical fact and logistical possibility the books stick.

However your going to hate Galileo because of Spaniard wank.

OAN:You should know the American way of swearing is infectious. You need to hit the travel to the Pacific rim sometimes Thanas, you should see all the little tribes we converted to English swearing.

[KrauserKrauser]

Wouldn't the introduction of the steel plow, the mechanical reaper and the 20th century varieties of plants well before the normal time line account for some of the above average availability of foodstuffs.

Peanuts weren't really figured out till 20th century and chemical fertilizers weren't used till the 19th (Not that they would be able to produce any large quantities of them with 17th century tech).

Whatever tractors they can keep in operation will greatly increase output and the simple production of iron plows will revolutionize farming in the new timeline.

[Thanas]

OAN:You should know the American way of swearing is infectious. You need to hit the travel to the Pacific rim sometimes Thanas, you should see all the little tribes we converted to English swearing.

But why would an Italian fluent in several other languages need to swear in English, especially not when Italian is already pretty strong?

But yeah, that explains it with the food issues.

Wouldn't the introduction of the steel plow, the mechanical reaper and the 20th century varieties of plants well before the normal time line account for some of the above average availability of foodstuffs.

Sure, but you need around 20 pounds of vegetables to produce one pound of meat. Which is certainly within the daily consumption of Americans. It is just too much.

[Simon_Jester]

However, the stories themselves are not consistent. For example, in the Ring of Fire story (the one about chips) you get the image that food is scarce - potatoes are rationed etc. However, in this book you have barbecues. And not just a barbecue aka an entire family shares one small chicken or so, but no, the story explicitly mentions ribs and (multiple) chicken pieces.

Food is scarce that first winter (as it should be, and I think they're fairly consistent about that). Then it's forgotten entirely like logistics constraints on Voyager.

If you asked the author he'd probably say that Grantville's local per capita GDP is high enough to import large amounts of food from elsewhere. But yeah, it's a problem.

[Questor]

1632 made my head hurt, and I'm nowhere near the historical expert Thanas is. Some points I find hilarious:

Mike Stearns is a political hotshot because of his union involvement. Notable only for the hilarity of this book being published by the same publisher as Ringo, who probably thinks that joining a union is roughly on the same level as signing a pact with the devil.

The characters - the black/white nature of so many characters frustrated me. At least Weber (Who I admit I used to read parts of as a guilty pleasure.) tries to make his other sides occasionally be something other than baby eating monsters - when they aren't literally baby eating monsters at least.

The pretentiousness - Disagreements always seemed to be presented as an obvious right/wrong situation.

I've only read the first book, and since I admit a fondness for terrible sci-fi (including the absolutely insane Space Bubble series by Ringo) I'll watch for Thanas's posts on the rest of the series, maybe it would be worth it loading them up on my ereader.

Thanas - you should oppress whoever recommended this to you.

[Zaune]

Mike Stearns is a political hotshot because of his union involvement. Notable only for the hilarity of this book being published by the same publisher as Ringo, who probably thinks that joining a union is roughly on the same level as signing a pact with the devil.

Say what you like about Baen, they don't let politics get in the way of a publishing contract if they think your books will sell.

[Simon_Jester]

1632 made my head hurt, and I'm nowhere near the historical expert Thanas is. Some points I find hilarious:

Mike Stearns is a political hotshot because of his union involvement. Notable only for the hilarity of this book being published by the same publisher as Ringo, who probably thinks that joining a union is roughly on the same level as signing a pact with the devil.

When Ringo and Flint signed on, the publisher was Jim Baen, who wasn't a fanatic and was quite capable of befriending both Trotskyites and John Birchers. Since Baen died... I really don't know, I think they publish both simply because both sell, and never mind the ideological incompatibility.

The characters - the black/white nature of so many characters frustrated me. At least Weber (Who I admit I used to read parts of as a guilty pleasure.) tries to make his other sides occasionally be something other than baby eating monsters - when they aren't literally baby eating monsters at least.

The pretentiousness - Disagreements always seemed to be presented as an obvious right/wrong situation.

This is one of the things about Flint that does get better when his coauthors smack some of the stupid out of him (even Weber can smack some stupid out of Flint, which is pretty impressive given what happens to Weber). But it remains a major problem with the series pretty much indefinitely: the "new modern society built by Americans/17th century Germans good, traditional 17th century culture and people bad" dichotomy.

It's hard to come up with much of a defense for things like absolute monarchy, witch hunts, and medieval-holdover legal systems when a viable alternative presents itself. To a certain extent the "our values good, past values bad" thing becomes inevitable once you write this type of plot, and it's a very difficult challenge to create a story where that doesn't happen aside from "time travellers arrive, they all catch dysentery and die in a fire, the end."

That's one reason I think the "time traveller community arrives and starts making radical changes" plotline is something of a dead end from a literary perspective. The mismatch in social contexts means that the story must have either a 'sad' ending like "time travellers all die in a fire and/or wind up enslaved" or turn into a "triumphal march of Modern Science and Democracy."

The former isn't a good plot in my view- why bother writing the story if you don't want the starting characters to play a meaningful role in the ending? The latter is worse writing, because there's very little dramatic tension; you know almost before you open the book that the author's going to make the safe choice and have modernity win.

[Thanas]

Chapter 8: Apparently English is a better language for swearing in than in German. Right. And instead of using the German "ficken" Flint apparently found it easier to invent "fucken". Granted, the use of the first would have been anachronistic, but still - this does not work at all. Especially not when Flint then uses "fixen" (guess what: everything becomes German when you slap -en on it), which in German already has a meaning - taking drugs. So the Germans want to take drugs with the crane. Huh. "upgefuckt."

So the United States Marine Corps had a couple of companies of cavalry, over-officered so they could be sent in penny packets to embassies everywhere under an officer of appropriate rank. The lessons of the earlier diplomatic missions had been well learned.

What lessons? From what earlier diplomatic missions?

Chapter 9: Flint is continuing to get the female and male German pronouns wrong. It is annoying.

Chapter 10: Attention to detail - condoms have run out - and less so, seeing how sheepskin condoms were apparently quite common in the 17th century.

Chapter 11:

Such a devious language, your dialect of English. I have grown quite fond of it.

The mere notion of an italian finding the English language to be devious is ridiculous.

Chapter 12: The whole business with Galileo. Somebody else already elaborated on it, so I won't.

Chapter 15: Flint seems to like Bedmar. I wonder why.

Chapter 21 - air conditioning starts to break down in Grantville. Good.

Also:

"This business in Franconia. Not a damned thing to do with witches or Jesuits. It's really happening because the rural places—you look, Francisco, and you find all these riots are in backwater little towns—are losing out to the bigger towns that are getting the factories and industries. Nothing I can do about it, either, except try and sit on 'em to keep the peace. But do they get pissed at me? No, they don't, they mob up and pick a neighbor to lynch."

That's right, religion had nothing to do with it.

After the Committees of Correspondence had gotten a look at the thing, sales had dried up quickly. A good threat of a beating backed up with an occasional demonstration—with the promise of broken bones to follow—would discourage even the most avaricious vendor. Of course, the actions of the Committees were thoroughly illegal. But not even Dan Frost had made any serious effort to put a stop to it. Tactically speaking, the author of the pamphlet had made a serious error by including the obscene material about Mike Stearns' wife Rebecca.
[...]
Mike chuckled. He, too, knew many of the firebrands involved with the Committees. They had no such troubles as the anonymous pamphleteer in getting their message across. They didn't even have to threaten anyone to get vendors to distribute their propaganda in the open. Well, not in Magdeburg, at least, or in Thuringia. It was hard to know what practices they might be following in the smaller towns in such provinces as Pomerania or Mecklenburg.

I guess Propaganda and street thug tactics is all well and good if they are your thugs.

Chapter 24 - Hey, let us get rich by manipulating markets.

[Mr Bean]

I guess Propaganda and street thug tactics is all well and good if they are your thugs.

This is foreshadowing for 1635 and it will not be pleasant when shit hits the fan.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah.

The Committees of Correspondence being pro-American/pro-democracy/whatever doesn't make them unambiguous good guys, and that becomes increasingly clear as the series moves on. In the later novels it's easy to get a sense of "okay, you've kicked off a mass movement of people who are starting to look creepily like the predecessors of the French Revolution... now what?"

[Zaune]

In the later novels it's easy to get a sense of "okay, you've kicked off a mass movement of people who are starting to look creepily like the predecessors of the French Revolution... now what?"

Recycle a bunch of exposition from the Honorverse?

[Mr Bean]

In the later novels it's easy to get a sense of "okay, you've kicked off a mass movement of people who are starting to look creepily like the predecessors of the French Revolution... now what?"

Recycle a bunch of exposition from the Honorverse?

What happens is quite different from that

[Simon_Jester]

In the later novels it's easy to get a sense of "okay, you've kicked off a mass movement of people who are starting to look creepily like the predecessors of the French Revolution... now what?"

Recycle a bunch of exposition from the Honorverse?

Heh. No. The specifics are utterly different, Weber isn't involved in the novels in question except peripherally, aand this isn't all being done as an excuse to have Revolutionary France IN SPACE!

[Thanas]

Chapter 29 - Basically, the merchants of venice are so bad that they can be outthought by a druggie hippie, his wife and a crafty Jew.

Chapter 30 - Ducos, the villain of the story, apparently sees nothing wrong in explaining his whole part to a captive.

Chapter 34 - Eric Flint sure likes the spanish Hidalgos. I am not going to declare the guy a Mary Sue yet, but he comes close.

Chapter 37 - Yeah, never mind. Said guy not only figures out a convoluted plot within minutes, he also faces down six French agents singlehandedly. While quoting the Princess Bride.

Sanchez smiled mirthlessly. "My name is Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz," he growled at the five still-standing French agents. "Prepare to die."
This time, Sharon couldn't stop the laugh from bursting out. A semi-hysterical laugh, to be sure. But still—

Where in the hell had Ruy Sanchez gotten his hands on a copy of The Princess Bride?

"Jesus," she heard Billy mutter. "He's not kidding."

The eruption of violence had paralyzed Billy Trumble for a moment. Soldier or not, Marine officer or not, he was actually a complete stranger to this kind of sudden mayhem. But while Billy had caught the same reference—he'd seen the movie—he understood something immediately which Sharon didn't.

Sanchez hadn't read the book. He'd probably never even heard of it. The character of Inigo Montoya was just an author's comic twist on an ancient and very real model.

Meet Ruy Sanchez. The original.

And he ain't being funny at all.

"Oh, Jesus," he repeated, clawing at the flap of his holster. One of the French thugs screamed something, threw his knife at Sanchez and then stooped to retrieve the fallen sword. The Catalan took a quick step to the left and swept the main gauche across, batting the thrown knife harmlessly into a far corner. Billy knew that he'd taken that little step, despite the risk, to make sure he didn't deflect the knife toward Sharon.

Goddam knight of the round table, too! Sixty years he's spent stewing in that crazy macho stuff.

He had the flap open finally. Thank God. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a sudden burst of swordplay. Just a quick clash of blades before Sanchez and his opponents backed away. This was no idiot Gene Kelly or Errol Flynn movie where swordsmen pranced and danced all over the place smiling gaily and matching sword strokes for minutes on end. This was a deadly serious business where one good stroke or cut left a man dead or dying in a split-second. It was like watching angry rattlesnakes in a cage.

You know, earlier on Flint had an American defeat a rapier men with a bowie knife. Yet suddenly it is supposed to be high art?

[Dahak]

Chapter 30 - Ducos, the villain of the story, apparently sees nothing wrong in explaining his whole part to a captive.

Well, that's par for the course for any villain worthy of the Evil Overlord List

[Simon_Jester]

In mitigation, I think what'd be really critical would be relative levels of experience and aggressiveness. Ruy is pitched as a man with a lot of combat experience, and any reservations he had about killing were found face-down in a ditch under suspicious circumstances forty years ago or so. Fighting him might be a very different experience from fighting some posturing young fool who's not nearly as good with a sword as he believes himself to be, with a very different outcome.

[StrikaAmaru]

[...]Chapter 30 - Ducos, the villain of the story, apparently sees nothing wrong in explaining his whole part to a captive.

Chapter 34 - Eric Flint sure likes the Spanish Hidalgos. I am not going to declare the guy a Mary Sue yet, but he comes close.[..][plus Princess Bride quote]

Well, nuts; I actually find myself defending this crap. Partly.

Ducos starts out unhinged (openly stated to have begun slipping into insanity years ago) and during this story he loses whatever last nuts and bolts were holding him together. The way I saw it, the whole scene wasn't supposed to have any internal logic, and that was the point.

Sanchez would have to be declared a Marty Stu, not a Mary Sue But on a serious note, I'm not sure he escapes going in that particularly distasteful pigeonhole; he does manage to accaparate every scene he shows up in, even those in which he isn't actually conscious. Not touching the fight scenes, I wouldn't know a good martial move from a sack of potatoes.

The Princess Bride thing: on this one I think you're being overly critical; the story is set in an era when people will go Inigo Montoya on their father/mother/sister/brother/dog's murder, and it's considered not just normal and honorable to do so, but cowardly to avoid conflict. Crap like this still exists today, if you bother to look for it. So on this one I actually agree with this hack of a writer: "Inigo Montoya" is not a movie invention, it's well rooted in reality. This is what people do when there's no police to investigate the murder case.

[StrikaAmaru]

Chapter 30 - Ducos, the villain of the story, apparently sees nothing wrong in explaining his whole part to a captive.

Well, that's par for the course for any villain worthy of the Evil Overlord List

Whaaaat? I take offense at that, the Evil Overlord List specifically and insistently forbids any sort of gloating.
#6 "I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them" .
#7 further empasizes When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."