Disappointed in 1632

[Brady Kj]

The book literally starts with the Imperials attacking Grantville and being saved by Gustavus cavalry and like you say its hard to write a story with many characters without many of them being genereic not to mention the bewildering number of authors involved in the series.
Marysueing is IMHO is due to the ISOT genre, wouldnt be much of a book if all are hit by plagues, lack of medicine, total breakdown of society in the uptime community as would be realistic

A group of fictional characters can solve problems without making one of the characters out to be the second coming of Christ.
The event with Gustavus that you described is near the end of the book. The first fight in the book is against a group of rapists from an unknown army, so it's valid they fought against those people. They encountered several other military groups and were quick to make friends with one group that happened to be from Scotland without knowing which side they're on and what their principles are. They gleefully slaughtered most of the military groups they saw without knowing which side they're on. or what their principles are. Fortunately, they chose rightly, because everyone in the book has magic powers in judging people's character.

And Ryan, I didn't get the impression that the first book is against the German race. More accurately, the first book portrays Germany as being in a very sad situation that needs to be fixed.

 

[Worffan101]

Yeah, the Naziesque biker gang in book 1 is ironically bigoted against the German downtimers for being low-tech. It's a whole thing.

 

[Neshomancer]

My biggest gripe is the lack of major uptime religious characters. You're in a tiny dying mining town. They shouldn't be so caviliar about an act of God.

 

[Uruk]

A group of fictional characters can solve problems without making one of the characters out to be the second coming of Christ.
The event with Gustavus that you described is near the end of the book. The first fight in the book is against a group of rapists from an unknown army, so it's valid they fought against those people. They encountered several other military groups and were quick to make friends with one group that happened to be from Scotland without knowing which side they're on and what their principles are. They gleefully slaughtered most of the military groups they saw without knowing which side they're on. or what their principles are. Fortunately, they chose rightly, because everyone in the book has magic powers in judging people's character.

And Ryan, I didn't get the impression that the first book is against the German race. More accurately, the first book portrays Germany as being in a very sad situation that needs to be fixed.

Like i said if you want realism they would all had died horribly in the first book

 

[Uruk]

My biggest gripe is the lack of major uptime religious characters. You're in a tiny dying mining town. They shouldn't be so caviliar about an act of God.

They have some religous characters including one that will become a Cardinal as for reacting to an act of God you first have to belive it is an act of God (which ofcourse it isnt in the book) and try to agree on what that act means, the French and the Spanish have widely different interpretations of Gods will

 

[Clandango]

I read the book online during computer class as a kid. I do reread the books these days, but seldom the first one. The expanded universe is where it is at. Granted, you will need a library with most of the official books and you cannot really expect to read all or even most of the Grantville Gazettes, given there are dozens of them, most for fifteen dollars or so so they can give decent rates to those published within. I believe they do have plenty of samples on the official website.

 

[Clandango]

My biggest gripe is the lack of major uptime religious characters. You're in a tiny dying mining town. They shouldn't be so caviliar about an act of God.

Priests are major characters in future books both uptime and downtime, and one of the only people to die outside of the school or a battle was an old woman who stayed home, depressed that the wife of an downtime assistant to the Catholic priest had taken her role cleaning the church, making her unsure of her place in the world and purpose. I suppose if I give examples of all the things from both the mainline and Gazette stuff it would be loads of spoilers.

Yeah, the Naziesque biker gang in book 1 is ironically bigoted against the German downtimers for being low-tech. It's a whole thing.

I am fond of that storyline as it goes on in future books and Gazettes. They act threatening to support a bunch of Annabaptists because they believe all the stories people made about them being drinkers and marrying their cousins made them fellow rednecks. They later returned the favor, after... Well, spoilers.

 

[Neshomancer]

riests are major characters in future books both uptime and downtime, and one of the only people to die outside of the school or a battle was an old woman who stayed home, depressed that the wife of an downtime assistant to the Catholic priest had taken her role cleaning the church, making her unsure of her place in the world and purpose. I suppose if I give examples of all the things from both the mainline and Gazette stuff it would be loads of spoilers.

I think there was a miscommunication here. All of the big players in Grantville Mike Stearns et al, just agree this has some scientific explanation. (it does, but they don't know that and it goes againt all human science, after all time travel is supposed to be impossible). If you read the mainline books only you'd be forgiven for thinkig the vast majority of uptimers were irrreligious.

 

[Brady Kj]

Like i said if you want realism they would all had died horribly in the first book

Realism isn't exactly what I want. But a creepy personality cult of Mike Stearns is very different from what I want.
Still, I'm glad I had fun and extra glad the future books have less of this problem.

 

[Lusitania]

The biggest criticism of the books was how condescending it all was. How the mighty and brilliant Americans were going to save the world. Picking sides without regard for reason.

 

[Worffan101]

The biggest criticism of the books was how condescending it all was. How the mighty and brilliant Americans were going to save the world. Picking sides without regard for reason.

Yeah, that gets a lot better really fast. Even in book 1 the downtimers get the chance to surprise uptimers with their knowledge and skills a few times.

 

[Neshomancer]

I could do with the author tracts praising Reba McIntyre/Country music and ant-rock/rap.

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

My biggest gripe is the lack of major uptime religious characters. You're in a tiny dying mining town. They shouldn't be so caviliar about an act of God.

They do refer to that a few times in Book 3. At least one religious - Catholic - character basically says she can't imagine it being the kind of thing God would do, she can't imagine herself and her husband being 'chosen' by him. So basically, the religious up-timers all figure 'science' rather than 'Direct Act of God'.

The biggest criticism of the books was how condescending it all was. How the mighty and brilliant Americans were going to save the world.

To be fair, they're far better about that than the original ISOT trilogy by Steve Stirling. Like, the Americans in 1632 deliberately are trying to uplift the downtimers and improve things for them, with their help. Contrast that with the Nantucketers, who're basically just colossal imperialist dickbags who grab whatever they can because they're stronger.

Picking sides without regard for reason.

The in-universe reason is that Gustavus Adolphus would actually be more inclined to allow religious freedom than the Spanish or the HRE.

The out-of-universe reason is Eric Flint has a mancrush on Gustavus Adophus.

Yeah, that gets a lot better really fast. Even in book 1 the downtimers get the chance to surprise uptimers with their knowledge and skills a few times.

Very true.

I could do with the author tracts praising Reba McIntyre/Country music and ant-rock/rap.

YES.

...Cue my planned AU where it's a Swedish town that gets ISOTed, and Gustavus gets introduced to Sabaton

 

[Neshomancer]

They do refer to that a few times in Book 3. At least one religious - Catholic - character basically says she can't imagine it being the kind of thing God would do, she can't imagine herself and her husband being 'chosen' by him. So basically, the religious up-timers all figure 'science' rather than 'Direct Act of God'.

I can see that line of reasoning, but I find it hard to believe there wouldn't be some group that would feel this was some sort of divine mandate.

The in-universe reason is that Gustavus Adolphus would actually be more inclined to allow religious freedom than the Spanish or the HRE.

The out-of-universe reason is Eric Flint has a mancrush on Gustavus Adophus.

Yeah, you're choices are the Protestants, or the guys who are okay with the Spanish Inquisition. Easy choice for modern western democracy even if old Protestants aren't ideal.

 

[Worffan101]

Yeah, you're choices are the Protestants, or the guys who are okay with the Spanish Inquisition. Easy choice for modern western democracy even if old Protestants aren't ideal.

The Protestants were at this point well into developing "freedom of religion" (in the sense of "freedom to set up our own hegemonic authoritarian religious community", anyway), too. They're assholes in their own ways, but compare to the Literal Spanish Inquisition...

 

[Neshomancer]

The Protestants were at this point well into developing "freedom of religion" (in the sense of "freedom to set up our own hegemonic authoritarian religious community", anyway), too. They're assholes in their own ways, but compare to the Literal Spanish Inquisition...

Never said they were ideal, just better than the alternative. At least Urban VIII was reasonable, before he got killed anyway. I wonder what that world would look like in modern times.

 

[Worffan101]

Never said they were ideal, just better than the alternative. At least Urban VIII was reasonable, before he got killed anyway. I wonder what that world would look like in modern times.

Yeah, no, I'm not disagreeing. Both sides are absolute dirtbags, but at least one of them is willing to consider not killing you if you are white, profess Christianity, and let them do your own thing. Really low bar.

 

[Uruk]

The biggest problem in the series is that rich&powerful = good, any bad thing they do is to blame on underings. The only really bad people are poor nobles and for some reason the Hugenots. In fact the Royalty is so good even the CoC has become fans of the Crown.

 

[Worffan101]

The biggest problem in the series is that rich&powerful = good, any bad thing they do is to blame on underings. The only really bad people are poor nobles and for some reason the Hugenots. In fact the Royalty is so good even the CoC has become fans of the Crown.

Charles I is portrayed as an idiot jerk (TBF that isn't even particularly historically inaccurate) who digs his own grave, Wallenstein quickly becomes royalty but is still a transparently sociopathic man who is explicitly stated to be perfectly willing to run the nastiest pogrom in history if the Bohemian Jews fail to him in his attempts to become and remain King of Bohemia, and most European monarchs are only grudgingly going along with uptime shifts. (Hence the Ram Rebellion, weak as that book's writing is) Richelieu may be a noble demon but he is perfectly willing to operate an authoritarian regime that attempts to export that authoritarianism to the liberalizing parts of Europe in his attempt to prevent future genocides that he is inadvertently laying the groundwork for with his repeated attempts to take out Grantville (thereby spreading violence and grudges across Europe).

Yeah, Weber likes to make the monarchs good guys and Flint has a crush on Gustavus Adolphus, but it's a bit more nuanced than that.

 

[Brady Kj]

I agree with Worffan here. I noticed some lines about that made me wonder if there's a bit of a bias toward wealth, but most of the book was solidly about the virtues of people who do manual labor for a living. There were definitely strong biases and oversimplifications though. Miners' union = good. Mike = infallible. All the people Mike chose on a whim = infallible. But when it comes to wealth, it gets complicated. I guess it's best summarized that hereditary wealth and power are bad, but a few people who inherited wealth and power are good, and capitalism under the check and balance of unions is best.