1632

A wonderful romp. I can't fully express just how much I enjoyed this book. It's not going to go down as a classic masterpiece, but it is extremely fun and informative. The premise wonderful. The characters are pretty well developed. The book was pretty fast paced. The historical aspect was exciting to read about. I can't wait until I read the next book. Thanks to Baen and the author for offering this as part of Baen's Free Library. The eBook was formatted well, with only one noticeable spelling error

I really wanted to like this book, to immerse myself in it. After all, I've read and enjoyed all Harry Turtledove's novels. However, the frequent long sections where the author doesn't get around to telling the reader what the heck he's talking about are a huge turnoff. Looong passages about some idea that has come into some character's mind, but the reader has no idea. Looong passages about the solution to some problem, and though the problem is clear, the solution is once again a secret in a character's imagination. Looong passages consisting of unfinished sentences and fragmented thoughts. I think the problem lies, in part, in the author assuming a shared context with the reader. I understand that his future works have the benefit of greater writing experience, and thus hopefully may avoid these pitfalls. However, to assume the reader knows what you mean when you haven't WRITTEN what you mean is a highschool-level mistake. It is clear that part of this assumed common context between writer and reader comes from an assumed USAmerican-ness. Every author in the English language needs to recognise how widespread this language is, and write with a view to the diversity of the potential readership. This book, this author, fails to do so. Fails badly. We shouldn't have to keep cross-referencing obscure references to US history just to understand the characters and the events of this story. If the historical references are important to the narrative, then they should be explained in the text.

I've never paid much attention to historical fiction or alternative history due to the context surrounding the events that are usually depicted. But this book has turned around my views on that and really gave me an often timehumors, but serious evaluation of that opinion. Well written and worth your time. I only regret that the books ends so well, would have loved to have read a series that stretched out indefinitely.