1632

Ring of Fire: 1

ISBN: 0-671-57849-9 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com

An entertaining, but not overly original or deep adventure of Americans bootstraping democracy, this book features political speeches, combat and some romance.

Reviewed by David on October 01, 2000

Genre: Science Fiction (Time Travel, Alternate Reality, Historical, Bootstraping Civilization, Politics, War)

Synopsis: A unique phenomenon transports a mining town in West Virginia to Germany in the 17th century. The town inhabitants, an argumentative, resourceful, hands-on lot have little time to recover from the shock, as the fringes of the brutal Thirty Year War threaten the small town.

Struggling with refugees, marauders, diminishing spare parts and supplies, the town has to decide: become a fortress in the midst of primitve chaos, or try to build a new political coalition to take on the world?

Full Review: The narrative focuses on a few individuals who become the political leaders in this attempt to use the Bill of Rights 150 years before it was drafted. While there are a few political struggles in this lenghty novel, for all intents and purposes the good are really good, and the opposition is flat and solidy evil. Some of the characters are memorable, and many are pleasantly cantankerous. Somewhat unusually, a trade union and its members are portrayed very positively, as are a few of the local aristocracy.

Coming after a long tradition of time-travel novels such as Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall and Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, this book is perhaps closest to the more recent Island in the Sea of Time, in its displacement of a whole town instead of an individual.

While entertaining and featuring sympathetic characters, this novel offers very little originality, and suffers from lack of moral ambiguity or interesting opposition.

Overall: 5.5; Plot: 5; Characters: 6; Style: 5.5; World-building: 6; Originality: 5;

ISBN: 0-671-57849-9 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com