A review by julis
1634: The Ram Rebellion by Virginia DeMarce, Eric Flint

adventurous funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Ok we’ve established that 1632 has problems and that I’m here anyway. The Ram Rebellion has more, particularly writing problems, in that it’s basically an anthology written around a theme, and as a result it feels extremely disjointed and it can be hard to keep track of characters.

… This may have been because I read several books in between starting and finishing this one, but…

That being said, I love that the downtimers are getting to run things (I am slightly less loving Mike being smug as hell about this…) and cause havoc.

2019 update: The last time I read this I didn’t much like it, but I found it way better this time round. Possibly that’s because I was so annoyed after 1634: The Baltic War. Possibly my tastes have changed.

Either way, this is still a hodgepodge of a book–some short stories and a novella around the start of a peasant rebellion–in which, as with Ring of Fire, some of the stories are quite good and others are passable. I wish there had been more follow through with the cast from the first story, and also either the format or Eric Flint’s historiography robs the whole rebellion of the sort of spontaneity and chaos seen in real uprisings (thinking of the Arab Spring, here in particular, although that’s not quite fair as it postdates this book).