Book Note: Eric Flint, 1633

This is book 2 of the "Ring of Fire" series.

This note does not contain major spoilers for the book.

This sequel to 1632 is by Eric Flint (the original author) and David Weber. David Weber is a much better known author, I would have thought (his Honor Harrington series has quite a following), and I'm surprised to see him signing on to this project. No upset or unhappy, though; I'm just not used to such things.

I'm reading the Baen Webscriptions version of the book, HTML converted by iSilo to read on the Palm. Works really well.

I seem to be reading slowly, but it's mostly because I'm spending most of my time on other things (and a good thing too).

The plot thickens, and in particular Cardinal Richelieu is on to the fact that what the new USA represents is the end of aristocracy. So he's against it, and he's thinking far ahead, and he's very powerful. Looks grim, though so far the USA is making good technical progress and following good political/social strategies. They're going to have a huge lasting influence even if they are wiped out.

They did eventually manage to bring it to a conclusion, but I found myself getting somewhat lost in the historical complexity. And the English branch of the expedition seemed to me to be just pruned off arbitrarily. I suspect they found the size getting out of hand, and perhaps will deal with that in another volume.

I was a bit amused at the politics—in particular the union boss saving their asses by being pro-immigrant, really accepting and integrating the 17th century immigrants into the new United States society. Nice touch, though, in some ways.