Customer Reviews (1)

Introduces Will james to a whole new genertion of readers
Flint wants to be the best cowboy on the rodeo circuit, and this classic Will James western tells the story of a young man determined to try. Flint Spears first appeared in 1938 and this superb reprint will introduce Will james to a whole new genertion of readers! ... Read more

Product Description
While the Thirty Years War rages on, a new force emerges in central Europe - the Confederated Principalities of Europe. This is an alliance between King Gustavus of Sweden and the West Virginians, led by Mike Stearns, who were hurled into 17th-century Germany by a mysterious time warp. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (74)

Not as good as the first
Much longer than 1632 and drags on in the end.There is less substance and not as fun. Other than that it was good.

An up and down sequel
I disagree with some reviewers' comments that this book stands by itself. I don't think it is even close to doing so. If you haven't read 1632, you'll really be lost in this book. The main focus of this book is a looming war between Gustav Adolfus/the USoE forces and Spain/France/England/Denmark. Very little about that conflict is resolved in this book, and you ARE going to want to find out what happened. So if you only read this book, you'd miss the outstanding first book in the series that sets this book up, and you'd miss finding out the conclusion of most of 1633's plot lines.

There aren't many Cons to this book, but the main Con is a big one. Unless you are preternaturally fascinated with minutiae of 1600s history of Germany (and elsewhere in Europe), there are long stretches of this book that are boring and do nothing to advance the story. It is common for the authors to indulge in page after page of family histories, political theorizing, and historical what ifs when a paragraph or two would have served the average reader much better. I quickly learned that I could skim through these portions and miss absolutely nothing important to the various plot lines. Once I began to do that I started enjoying the book much more. If you happen to be more interested in that material, then there is more book for you to enjoy. I suspect that most readers will share my taste. 1632 was a riveting, fast paced book. The sections I mention of this nature in 1633 drag it to a stop over and over again.

Now for the Pros, and there are many of these. One of the main foci of 1633 is that the "down timers" have gotten their hands on history books and immediately seek to twist events in their favor. Some very interesting things happen in that light. The Americans continue to leverage the technological potentials to survive and help their allies ... and in some interesting and surprising ways.

Characters that you began to care about in 1632 continue to evolve, particularly the industrialist Simpson. A technology that you may have come to wonder about in the first book makes an important appearance here.

Unfortunately, some of the characters that interacted well together in 1632 are split up in 1633 and remain so for the entirety of the novel. This cuts down a bit on some of the entertaining personality interactions that made 1632 so fascinating. Hopefully these characters will get back together in the 3rd book so that we can regain that atmosphere.

I have started to read The Baltic War as of this review, and its tone is, at least at the start, much more like the far superior 1632. If that continues to be true, I think I'll eventually regard 1633 as a somewhat pedestrian but necessary bridge between 1632 and the rest of the series. It is a must read if you are interested in reading all or much of the series. There is not as much fun, excitement, or jaunty character interaction as in 1632, but there is fun and interest to be found.

Excellent alternate history
I am not a fan of alternate histories in general, but this one grabs and keeps my attention. I'm a hard-nosed engineer by trade and this series has relatively few technical and economic mistakes. The characters are real people, and know the difference between right and wrong. The authors do an excellent job portraying the characters from different points of view. A lot of the story is in comparing how the people of a 21st century West Virginia town interact with the surrounding 17th century German countryside in the middle of the 30 years war. I'm writing this review because it's not obvious which books carry the main story thread. The first (and best) novel is 1632, followed by this 1633 being reviewed, then 1634 The Baltic War. I am not as fond of the Galileo Affair because it is more politics and intrigue, and less action.

Great Idea, Great Execution.Very Entertaining
This series is one of those ideas that we've all had, what if we could go back in time....

1633 was decent.I could definitely tell that this was a 'collaboration' since Weber's style of writing is a little bit different from Flint's but I don't think most people will catch that.

I basically read this non-stop over two days.The only complaint I have is I was confused as all hell on which book was the 'sequel' to 1632.For Pete's sake guys, I almost just said to hell with it and stopped reading the series.I had to jump online to make heads or tails of what book was next.

Personally, Ring of Fire may be a good book, but I just don't want to waste time with filler short stories (that's just me).

Anyways, I liked 1633 though it seemed to have less action than 1632 but it was still enjoyable.I'm getting into the characters and look forward to 1634 which as near as I can tell, "The Baltic Wars" is the next book in the series.

Could you guys make it any more confusing?For crying out loud, we developed a number system a few thousand years ago for a reason.How about using it :)

Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, etc. etc.

A sequel that is setting the stage for a LOOOONNNNGGGG series!
1633 is the sequel to 1632. Not much of a surprise there if you know your numbers. However, we are looking at books here and this book (1633) is the sequel to the earlier one, although the text constantly talks of this book taking place two years after the first one. So, the authors may be arithmetically challenged. They also seem challenged on getting all the plot elements in place as this very long book (670+ pages) seems to drag on and on in the beginning. the pace picks up quite a bit in the last 100-150 pages as the expected battles take place. However, what does take place in the first 500 pages is many scenes that set the stage for many books to come.

Let's reprise a little here. The premise of 1632 was to look at what might happen when a small slice of 20th century America is transposed into the past and plunked down in the middle of the 30 years war in central Germany. 1632 was a fun romp with that in mind and of course, the technologically superior Americans managed to establish a mini-country that is organized on democratic lines. Duh! Now, two years later, what we find is that the mini-America is trying to initially remain independent and out of the fighting, but is immersed in the fighting between King Gustav of Sweden and Cardinal Richelieu of France. But it's not enough that they are on the side of King Gustav - they are trying to pull down the aristocratic society and create a modern democracy in Germany that predates the real emergence of this movement in the world by almost 250 years!

When you set yourself such a monumental task, it is no wonder that most of the fun is gone from this book. This also explains why we see some plot threads come about and then appear to fritter away to nothingness - presumeably to reappear on one of the promised future volumes. However, there is also a lot of stuff that should have been excised from this book. For instance, huge parts of the book discuss the politics of Grantville and then of the rest of Europe and many names are dropped in the process. While this is a testament to the historical research that the authors conducted, I am not sure that understanding the family relationships between this minor count and that minor duke is really moving this story forward. Another irritating aspect of this section is the constant proselytizing of how much better a world controled by unions is. On the other hand, in this book the "bad industrialist" is transformed into one of the most helpful and apolitical people who inhabit the book. Go figure?

The cover shows the front view of a huge warship, and the story talks about warships that will go up and down rivers (different for sure than the cover), however when the battle scenes erupt in the last few pages of the book, we see that the American Navy consists of three speedboats!? Huh? It was thrilling to read of the differences between the modern equipment battling the sailing ships, but eventually the readers has to start asking how can all that equipment still be functioning without the spport of the whole industrial world that was available in 20th or 21st century America?

Another part where you have to suspend your disbelief to a huge extent is the emphasis paid on how the other countries all manage to steal history books from Grantville and read them to see what the future will hold, and then take action to modify those futures. Of course, just the appearance of Grantville will have changed the future, but never mind that. What interests me is why the other countries choose to steal only history books and not focus on the technical and science books that would allow them to reduce the technological advantage that the Americans have? Doesn't seem to make much sense.

Anyway, I took off one star because of the dreary politics, the long drawn-out discussions of the philosophies and the utterly unbelievable passages (the Jewish woman who negotiates as an equal with Richelieu who at the end of the book starts swearing at a Rabbi while adopting a baby, etc.). I am interested in reading the next one in the series in the hopes that it goes back to the fun and games of the first one. ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: Cleveland Ohio : A.H. Clark Co.Publication date: 1904Subjects: Ohio River Valley -- Description and travelUnited States -- Description and travelNorthwest, Old -- Description and travelNew York (N.Y.) -- Description and travelPhiladelphia (Pa.) -- Description and travelNotes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

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Product Description
Also Written By S. C. T. Dodd And Francis B. Thurber. With Numerous Expressions Of Representative Opinion And Bibliography. ... Read more

Product Description
The earth has been under the alien tyranny of the Jao for 20 years. Unfortunately the Ekhat have sent a genocidal extermination fleet to the solar system and earth's only hope is in the hands of a young Jao prince and a young female human. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

Good beach reading
Overall good recreational reading - the authors clearly idolize the military and equally clearly never served in it. ;). There are several good action sequences. The authors lay the ground for at least one sequel.

Eagerly Awaiting the Sequel
This was the first book I have read by either Eric Flint or K.D. Wentworth and I must say that I was hooked from the beginning. The concept seemed fresh to be, man meets alien conquerors and fails to defeat them. This does not conform to the normal style of military sci-fi that I read. There isn't a whole lot of action, there is some and it is well written. The real catch of the book though is the characters. The Jao are an extremely well thought out race of aliens. They are different enough to not be human but similar enough that they are can be reasoned with to a degree. The aliens have their own culture/society that dosn't always mesh well with human culture/society. Aille, the storys main character, grows and learns from his time on Earth and the people that he associates with. I highly recommend this book to any sci-fi fan and I can't wait till the sequel is released.

One more thing, the space battle in the sun's photosphere is super cool.

Great book
The pace was fast and the writing put you in the action.It made you feel like one of the characters experiencing it first hand.

Not many sci-fi books like this one
One of the 10 best I've read - and I've read many.It looks like other reviewers agree.This story seems so much like something that really happened - or could happen - that you feel you are on Earth in an alternate universe.

The aliens have invaded, and we lost.But, like humans, they have good guys and bad guys, and they have conflict amongst themselves.The humans have to dig deep to find their courage and ingenuity - and isn't that always so?That we only rise to the occasion when things seem the worst?

To learn about the real extraterrestrial intervention check out the Allies of Humanity.

Alien invasion and the humans have lost
Alien invasion novels tend to feature the humans. Either the humans who drive off the aliens, the humans who are resisting the aliens, or the humans who themselves are the alien invaders. In this story, however, the humans have lost, the aliens have won, and the story is about the aliens.

These aliens have a bigger purpose than just conquest. They are fighting a different group of aliens. And so they would really rather if they didn't have any trouble from the annoying humans. But humans being humans, they continue to annoy.

Eventually, one clan group of the aliens decides the time is right to strike a blow against the prestige of another clan group, and sends an emmisary to Earth in order to accomplish this goal. This setup allows us to see the situation on Earth 20 years after the invasion from the eyes of a recent arrival, someone who is trying to understand the situation and make use of it.

It's a great choice for advancing the story and letting the reader discover the situation as the central character does.

Meanwhile, we also view the situation from some of the humans who have grown up in this altered world as a conquered people. These viewpoint characters show us what the main character does not or can not see, allowing the story to progress in full view of the reader.

And then, of course, the second group of aliens arrives with a battle fleet. What happens to the earth and the fate of the human race depends on how well one alien overlord can come to understand and rely upon his conquered human subjects.

It's a great book, highly enjoyable. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
First-hand account of coming of age in the early Southwest and California. First published more than a century and a half ago, Pattie's narrative is a unique look at life in the early Southwest and California. Told in a vivid first-person account, it is the story of a young man's attempt to adjust to a way of life far different from that in which he was raised. The story of a young man coming of age is universal, explaining why Pattie's story still draws readers today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Don't Write Off This Book So Quickly!
Indeed, much of this tale is apparently not true. The editor (Richard Batman) makes this clear from the get-go, and points out the most obvious whoppers with plenty of footnotes and clarifications. He also tells you that the publisher, Timothy Flint, admitted to adding some "topographical illustrations," whatever that means. As you read it, you can inherently sense when the authorship changes, since Pattie's writing style seems to involve an excessive use of commas.

So, what is the value of this book? Regardless of historical accuracy, this is still a reprint of a book that came out in 1831. That in itself gives it historical value, whether fact or fiction. The scenery, the sentiments, the lifestyle - they are all authentic to their time, and offer a window to the past from some primary source, whomever that may be. The relationships between the whites and the Indians are typical of any of the "mountain man" books you may choose to read, which may be more true than this. However I found the interactions between the Americans and the Spanish-Mexicans much more revealing and intriguing.The last third of the book, which depicts Pattie's experiences in California (with many events confirmed by other sources), is more personal, and at times heartbreaking. Whether or not he "saved" the population with smallpox vaccine is not half as interesting as his descriptions of the California missions he visited up the coast. As a Californian, I was pleased to read references to the La Brea Tar Pits, and amused to learn that two priests had robbed the St. Buenaventura mission of silver and gold prior to Pattie's arrival.

I would recommend this book for readers who enjoy Mountain Man lore, Southwest/California history, or 19th century "historical" literature. (This book also contains several delightful original illustrations of a somewhat primitive style, reminiscent of Revolutionary Era artwork.)

What's true and what's not?
I can't recommend this book because its partly or mostly untrue. Pattie, is one is to believe him, traversed nearly every corner of the old West from 1824 to 1830, participated in countless battles with Indians, rescued Mexican maidens, was one of the first Mountain Men to reach California, became a hero when he vaccinated 18,000 Californians against smallpox, explored large parts of the Rocky Mountains, and ended up in a Mexican jail from whence he made his way back to the United States and dictated his story to a journalist.

Pattie tells a good tale and there is an air of authenticity in many of his travels.He probably saw some country out West, and some of his descriptions are no doubt valuable, but it appears he vastly exaggerated his exploits.The problem with reading the book is that you can't be sure what is truth and what is fiction.

Well, telling whoppers was a tradition among the Mountain Men and Pattie seems to have been a master teller of tall tales -- and smart enough not to make them so tall that they are manifestly untrue. There's enough authentic material about the Mountain Men in the 1820s to ignore this book without loss. If you're captivated by Pattie, the editor, Richard Batman, has written "James Pattie's West" which tries to unravel the truth in this story.

Smallchief ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
Wonderfully told, funny and touching, The Book of Ash is the story of a son's search for his father and his struggle to understand his family and the adult world. Twenty years ago Cooper James' life was torn apart. His family collapsed among the claustrophobic confines of a rural hippy commune. Cooper hasn't seen his father since the day his adultery was uncovered. As an adult he tries to forget his bizarre past and get on with the present but when a coffee canister, sent from America, filled with a strange grey dust arrives at his work, he is called before his superiors to explain. If it is not an anthrax hoax, then what is it? Could it be the ashes of his father. And if so, how has it found its way to him? Cooper leaves Britiain for the United States where he tries to piece together the shards of his father's life from the conflicting accounts of his wierd and highly unreliable friends. And through these encounters he learns all the things that his father might have told him, father-to-son - and what really happened the night his father left. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Gripping, funny, interesting
I love this book. Very unusual & hard to categorise.It is a sort of non-fictional novel.It is structured like a quest, like a computer adventure, a search for father. It has a who-done-it feel. It even has a love interest that leaves me wanting to shout advice as the Asperers protagonist is clumsily devoid of skills in this area. It has touching moments. Great turns of phrase in a Tim Robbins way.

I also liked Habitus, Flint's forst novel.I imagine it would appeal to people who like nery novels like Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. ... Read more

Product Description
James flint lives in London, where he has worked as an editor for Wired UK and mute magazine. This is his first novel.Amazon.com Review
In 1973, affection-starved Jennifer Several takes two lovers: Judd Axelrod, shy prepubescent son of a Hollywood starlet, and Joel Kluge, an ex-Hasidic math genius. As Judd becomes a supernaturally gifted gambler, escaping the bungling of his psychoanalyst, Joel's search for meaning leads him to create a computerized golem, to repair the world of evil. Meanwhile, in Jennifer's womb a genetic anomaly takes root--a child bearing the DNA of its two fathers. Above them all circles the serenely conscious figure of Laika, first dog in space, feeding on the outpourings of the digital age.

Habitus teems with ideas. As if in mimicry of the global village, we spark from one location to another, as the author boldly captures their essence: L.A., Cambridge, Stratford-upon-Avon, even Dachau and Sobibor. The prose leads stimulating forays into a wealth of disparate subjects, deftly illuminating their connections. There's a smattering of kabbalah, some advanced mathematics, even a tract on gambling. Unfortunately, this often occurs at the expense of story. Complex scientific segues frequently force us to disengage and switch drives from "audience" to "student," just as we begin to care about Flint's characters. A book with humor and heart, certainly, but one slightly too concerned about proving its cleverness. --Matthew Baylis, Amazon.co.uk ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Do the math.
I found this book to be much more enjoyable after I accepted the author's premises and went on to his conclusion. I think the key to reading this is to not get caught up in logical or scientific inconsistencies. Thus, with suspended disbelief, did I make it through this inventive novel.

I enjoy fiction that makes me think - and this truly fit the bill. We have metaphysics, physics, math and philosophy intermixed with significant quantities of mind, body and mood altering substances. The three main adult characters are dysfunctional families all to themselves.

The constant switch in which character we are following causes the reader to have to pay close attention. Many times I had to back up a few pages to get back in synch with the flow of the story. Patience will be rewarded as this convoluted tale unfolds.

There is plenty of info in the Editorial Reviews and Product Description (above) to describe the storyline. Flint's writing is uneven at times, with occasional use of stream-of-consciousness which adds little to the book. Neither science fiction nor fantasy, he makes use of weird twists in reality to push the story along.

The ending was very rushed and a little weak. If you are not a fan of post-modernism and magical realism, you should give this one a pass.It was a page turner for me, even though it should have had at least fifty pages worth of material edited out.

a worthy read, but he should have done better research
If you don't mind sifting through all the tedious and pretentious biology and science too much, the little gold nugget passages of wordy ingenuity you will stumble across at one or the other point will make it worth it.

What I have to reproach is that, while his science might be flashily correct, the guy knows nothing about shop-lifting or drugs. The ways he depicts department store thieving and amphetamine consumption are the typically quasi realistic ones of someone who has never done any of it!

Crapitus - Me no Laika
'This book should not be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force', and there were many times when I felt like doing just that.I don't normally struggle to finish a book, but I did with this one.Apart from the haphazard, disjointed plot, lurching from scene to scene for no apparent reason, the subject matter didn't really appeal, littered as it was with tawdry sexual couplings (and singlings - there was a fair bit of wanking going on, by both the characters and the author).The mystery to me was how Habitus got such uniformly good reviews from likes of New Scientist and Time Out.New Scientist said it was a 'witty often erudite stylish commentary on our pre-millenial condition'.It barely raised a smile with me, and the commentary was more on the state of the author's pot addled grey matter than the human condition, pre-millenial or otherwise.

There were some genuinely good passages from time to time, but all too often we would be zooming off somewhere else to ponder some other bodily function, in dispassionate scientific terms of course, but tasteless nonetheless.This was the problem, the science was generally accurate, but seemed to be designed not to inform or educate, but to show off. All in all, a disappointing read which could only be measurably improved by reducing the constituent pages to their original chemical elements, preferably at a temperature of a thousand degrees Centigrade.

Go Laika!
I haven't even finished the book and I already feel I have to share with you that I really, really love it! Habitus mixes space travel, genetics and the comming of age of the computer with Hollywood and the Holocaust --- and in doing so, it doesn't even seem farfetched. Some of the sentences are mere jewels, I can hardly put this book down (although it is easy to do so, since the chapters are pretty short). It is right up there with Tim Powers' Expiration Date!

Disjointed, poor plot construction and narrative structure
He boasts on his website about not bothering about his studies and being more concerned with "smoking dope" whilst at Oxford. You can see the way it's warped his mind, because 'Habitus' is an incomprehensible read, scripted in a pretentious way which says "hey, look how clever a writer I am". ... Read more

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With An Appendix. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
In an effort to understand British-Papal relations during the nineteenth century, James Flint examines the diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the Holy See during the first Russell ministry of 1846-1852.Earlier studies often blame the ministry’s failure to establish relations with Pope Pius IX on assorted British blunders, either by ministers or (in a crucial instance) by the House of Lords. But Flint’s extensive research in the Vatican archives finds that even the most skillful British campaign would have found it difficult to set up diplomatic relations that, for the most part, the Papal government did not want.

This book is the first complete study of this diplomatic incident and of its implications for understanding the long history of unease between Great Britain and the Holy See. Flint explains that the Roman Curia rightly feared that an accredited British diplomat might demand unwelcome reforms within the Papal States, or even act in a way inimical to the Pope’s temporal power. Of great concern was that a British mission in Rome might pressure the Holy See to use its authority to make Catholic Ireland more amenable to British rule.

Throughout the book, Flint is careful to define Ireland’s role as the unspoken third party in the discussion. Determined not to see their church used as a bargaining chip, the more nationalistic bishops and the officials of the Irish College in Rome both kept a wary eye upon British activity and made their views known to the Roman authorities. The Potato Famine, the 1848 Revolutions, and the Papal Aggression uproar all contributed to a growing impasse that left the Papal and British governments further apart when the Russell ministry left office than when it entered. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format.Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more