Grantville Gazette II

As I have found in most anthologies, some pieces are more rewarding than others. However, in all the stories included in this book I am interested in reading more about each of the primary characters and how their lives evolve in the future. I found particularly fun the two lead characters in "The Company Men", their English/Irish humor and good natured kidding. Eric Flint's own story, "Steps in the Dance" was a quick read and the characters would be further developed if I was in charge of the series.

Like all of the other anthologies so far in this series, this deals not with the great movements of the times, but the everyday lives of uptimers and downtime German and Italian commoners. These are short bite-size pieces that are very satisfying individually, and make the whole 163x universe more full and fulfilling. Heck even the non-fiction articles are all fascinating. Buy, Buy, Buy. Even better, contribute these to all middle school and high school libraries in your area. This will help students better understand one of the most complicated and disastrous periods of European history.

While waiting for the next installment of Flint's 1632 series, this collection of tales fills in the gap very nicely. All of the tales were good. Now, An Invisible War was a bit drawn out and wordy. Other than that one can only say that more tales would be the only thing desired of this collection. As to the technical essays, some were of interest to me and others not. The ones that were interesting were well written and covered several interesting points.

As I write this, the e-book edition of Grantville Gazette Volume six is about to be released, and GG2 is just coming out in hard cover. If you like the 1632 series, you will like this anthology of stories by Eric Flint and the other authors working in the 1632 Universe. The individual storys, as the Gazette always does fill in the fussy bits and edges of the 1632 universe. We are all waiting for 1634: The Baltic War to move the main story line forward, but this edition does a good job of providing your money's worth of stories and non fiction. Of course, I have to admit, it's got MY non-fiction article in it. But still. I liked it. -_ Rick Boatright