Reviews

The Alexander Inheritance by Gorg Huff, Paula Goodlett, Eric Flint

flagstaff's review against another edition

4.0

Another good execution on the Ring of fire style. But this time a Caribbean cruse ship finds itself in the Mediterranean Sea when Greece was dominate.

brandt's review

4.0

Interesting but any conflict died halfway through the book. After that the future people were coasting. They practically conquered the world without doing much of anything by the end.

leons1701's review

3.0

Despite being smack dab in one of my favorite genres and the main author being Flint, one of the stronger practitioners of said sub-genre, this ended up bordering dangerous close to meh. Some definite potential for the sequel(s) but nowhere near as strong as 1632. Perhaps it's the lack of real connection to most of the characters, with viewpoints being far too scattered to really fix on more than one or two strong characters (and with none of those being entirely memorable). Perhaps it's the rush of events, with little time spent on explaining how people are dealing with them. Most likely, its a combination of the two, a cast of thousands and a relatively modest tome covering a very eventful year mean there is little to no depth to this book, and that is sad.

There's some nice stuff about the resources of a modern cruise ship and some fair evidence the writers have done their research, but I can't help but feel a lot of things just get glossed over. This could easily have been a four or maybe even five star book, instead I find myself wondering if just maybe three stars wasn't generous.

brianrenaud's review

3.0

Ok, perhaps not quite a full 3 stars. Adequately crafted, but I didn't feel like any of the characters really developed as much as I would have liked. As usual, all the up-timer schemes and technology trials work out really well. For the most part, the down-timers rapidly adopt American ascendant middle class values and perspectives. The plot wasn't particularly momentous (and probably included too much political philosophy). Overall, it's about what you'd expect if you've read other Assiti shards works.

jameseckman's review

3.0

This has more of a Game of Thrones feel than his other time travel series, not surprising, it occurs in that mess that left by Alexander the Great. Unlike GOT there are some sympathetic rulers and ones that can learn from (future) history. Ends on a bit of a cliffhanger and is obviously set up for a sequel. I'd wait for the sequel! Otherwise a decent read.

cdaetwyler's review

2.0

I very much wanted to like this; I'm fond of the authors, and the concept is cool. But it just felt like it badly needed another pass of editing and revision. Too many dropped narrative threads that didn't go anywhere yet, too many conversations where people reached conclusions without any apparent means of getting there... it felt a little too much like the characters had already read the forum discussion about the planning of the series.

Also, while the one point where a couple of the uptime characters make a homophobic joke didn't really bother me overmuch, it was clearly not meant maliciously and was in character for their friendly banter, but it did make it all too obvious that somehow this ship of 5,000 people had no visible queer characters.