1636: Mission to the Mughals (Ring of Fire Book 23) by Eric Flint, Griffin Barber

1636: Mission to the Mughals by Eric Flint

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This entry in the series starts nearish the beginning, oh, maybe a year after the beginning of the series (as in, roughly 1633 - with the series starting in 1632 with the arrival of 20th Century Grantsville West Virginia in the middle of the Germanies trapped in the 30 years war), when Mike Stearns and various other people are setting up a group of people to head off to India on a trading mission. Mostly to get gunpowder and opium. Sent on the trip are some railroad people, an EMT, a con-man, and a con-woman. Oh, and a spy. The book then makes snippet jumps up to 1636.

The book is not just from the European perspective, though, no there are many Indians who get a turn at the POV wheel. Many of whom share variations of the name ‘Johan’. And are related to people with a name like that. (Not to be confused with John, the lead European dude (well, he's from Granstville West VA USA, but that's in Europe now)).

The book is an interesting look inside Mughal India. My only real problem with the book was the part where I didn’t really like any of the characters. I didn’t dislike them, per se, I just didn’t like any of them. Oh, and then there’s the problem wherein I looked up the historical characters – a good portion of the Indians – so that I’d have a better understanding of the place and time – which is a problem only in the part where I lost myself reading about them, learning about them, then trying to forget all I learned because I didn’t want to apply that to these characters. Or, I should say, want to remember their real life histories, and let that bias me in what I was reading.

Right. So. Europeans head to India and wander around. Indians intriguing as they apparently do, wandering around fighting each other, and attempting to mourn and build the Taj Mahal. There was an abundance of weepy emotional men in this book – from the lead European (by way of Grantville West VA) who kept whimpering from being forced to kill a kid (then whimpering over people dying near him; then whimpering about other things), to various Indians – the hot-headed Muslim leader, the Emperor guy alternating mourning for his dead wife (sorry, for his favorite wife – who died, he both has other wives and has concubines - and there's talk of him constantly 'using' them, carnally) with bouts of anger, to . . . um, well, others were overly emotional as well.

Bah, I fought to find something to write, but I’m not really getting anywhere. Interesting enough book. Set in India (mostly), and involving no character who has ever been seen before in this series (at least the full-length books I’ve read) except for Sterns (or was that Stearns?) and Nasi (or whatever that fella's name was). Oh, and like many of the books in this series, there are many plot-lines that remain unresolved by the time the book ended.

Rating: 3.6

December 22 2017



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