1636: The Ottoman Onslaught by Eric FlintMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I've always had one specific problem with this series - at least after the first two or three books - there are about a billion characters (give or take a million), and, while not all of them are in each book, enough of them are there presenting their own point of view that it gets super . . . . annoying to have one particular storyline start to get interesting, only to jump to twelve different POV's before getting back to that other one that was beginning to get interesting. Of course, by that point, I'm somewhat less than intrigued to find out more about that paused story-line.
A . . . well, no, not secondary. Another problem I have is the simple fact that there are these fat books filled with 'stuff', and we are way past 30 books by this point (title says 21, but there are both lots of side books, and, in addition, a ton of short story books) and yet the story started in 1632 and we have gotten, after 30+ books, to 1636. The vast majority of the time, inside the Germanies (or, at least, Central and Eastern Europe - a lot more central than eastern). Occasionally bouncing around in Italy, France, England, and other locations in Europe - once in the Americas. Basically, what I'm saying is that a ton of words have been written, and the series has barely gotten anywhere, nor travelled that far from it's starting location in the Germanies during the 30 years war.
An issue I had more with the side book that followed a cruise ship to ancient Greece, but one that I noticed here again - I do not mind, tremendously, if a story/series decided to be purely heterosexual in nature - or, I meant to say, seemingly asexual. But when so many story lines keep shoving people together, coupling up, etc., it gets tiresome to see m/f, m/f, m/f - man female over and over again. Again, this is a cast of billions. A cast of 10? 20? Sure, fine, 100% heterosexual stories. Whatever. But a cast of 100s? Yeah, some of those people are going to be something other than heterosexual. Again, I don't mind if 'nothing' gets seen that doesn't follow this pattern, if the series had only followed one or 8 people. Wait, no, I meant that plus - felt the need to include romance. I happily read any and everything, heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, asexual, aromantic, etc. etc., it's just that we are at book 30+ here . . .. Hell, there's rapes, there's jokes about 'even the pope screws around in this time period', and I believe we've even encountered a few eunchs, but no-one who wasn't 100% heterosexual.
Except - some of the 'uptime' youngsters are working at doing diplomatic stuff, political stuff, war stuff, in Vienna - and one of the people the uptimers 'work with', 'encounter' has a sister - who suddenly got thrust forward and became a character in her own right. Well, admittedly she started saying and showing signs that others have done before to 'mark' that they have a romantic interest in someone else in this series. It occurred once. And that individual was one of the female uptimers. But even though she was 'stuck' with that other woman for months in a dark cellar region - with the brother and another of the youngsters (not an uptimer but closely working with them), that romantic spark never showed itself again (meanwhile, in this small area, the other two people down there fuck like bunnies).
Right. Normally I'd have had something like 'character x does stuff, continues doing stuff, the end'. But, as noted, there's this massively large cast so I can't really do a 'this is the important person/these are the important people' thing.
Boiled down: The Germanies are continuing their unification under the hands of the Swedish king, and the 'American' uptimers. Both by expanding territory, and by political elections. Oh, and diplomacy and alliances. The Uptimer/Swedish entity is currently at war, in this book, with Poland and Bohemia. But, the book is called 'Ottoman Onslaught'! Yeah, eventually the Ottoman empire makes military advances against Austria-Hungry. Way later in the book than I'd expect for a book with that specific book title.
pfft. poor review.
Rating: 3.65
August 31 2017
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