1632

Honestly if my book club hadn't selected this book, I never would have read it. I am guilty of sometimes judging a book by its cover, and this one screamed history lesson to me. Granted there is a fair chunk of history involved, but that's not the main idea behind the story. Instead we have a chunk of modern americans from west virginia transported back in time to the thirty years war and they must find a way to survive. Sure they have technology and weaponry from our modern world, but that alone won't save them. I love how the townspeople band together and buckle down for the long haul. The interactions between them and the original people of the time line they've landed into is great. The author did a wonderful job showing how the different languages and cultures slowly mingled into a community. I found as I read that any battle not involving the Americans bored me, I simply didn't care. The political side of things was sorta boring for me as well. In general I don't like politics and debating about the new constitution, how voting would work, who opposing parties were, etc. held no interest for me. However, I think I will actually continue on with this series. I would love to see how this diverse group continues to survive together. :)

This book has an unmistakable general similarity to [b:Island in the Sea of Time 99702 Island in the Sea of Time (Nantucket, #1) S.M. Stirling https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1340627722l/99702.SY75.jpg 96121] by [a:S.M. Stirling 14002 S.M. Stirling https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1440541452p2/14002.jpg].Both books describe a small chunk of the modern USA, populated by thousands of people, being hurled into the past by some unknown agency and left there. In both cases the Americans are of course well in advance of current science and technology, and use their advantages to defeat enemies, make friends, acquire more territory, convert locals into American citizens, and spread American social and political ideas around.Stirling's book was published two years earlier. Did Flint deliberately copy the idea, or was it coincidence? I don't know.The main difference is that Stirling's Americans are flung back to 1250 BC without changing their geographical location, while Flint's Americans are flung back to 1631 AD (not 1632, despite the book's title) and find themselves in Germany, in the middle of the Thirty Years War.In both books, the characters tend to be rather too good to be true, as though the author decided on their basic characteristics and then added saturation in Photoshop. I'd say the effect is a bit more blatant in Flint's book; in fact, Stirling is a significantly better writer and I rate his book higher.However, Flint's book is quite entertaining if you like this kind of story, and I enjoyed it well enough. Don't expect high literature: this is an unpretentious adventure story, lacking in subtlety.Military events are quite prominent in both books, but more so in Flint's, as his characters are actually dropped into the middle of a war, whereas Stirling's characters are under no immediate military threat, and get involved in fighting only after they start exploring.Stirling's characters fairly soon run out of ammunition for their 20th century weapons, and have to start designing and making their own weapons and ammunition. Flint's characters, however, seem to have remarkably large stocks of ammunition.Both books show evidence of substantial research and taught me something about the respective time periods, neither of which I'd previously studied.So far, I haven't felt the urge to read any sequels to this book. This one is quite fun, but the quality of writing leaves something to be desired, and the sequels seem to be lower rated by other readers.