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A review by weesam_nz
1632 by Eric Flint
1.0
I thought I was going to like this book before I started it. It had everything I wanted - small modern day town transplanted back in time? Yes, I was going to like it. Then I actually started reading it and we get a gang rape in the first chapter, where after the men get through slaughtering the rapists, they just dismiss the poor woman with a "she'll be alright".
Right there I was totally put off this book, but I persisted. At 100% in I realised I was reading one of the worst books I had ever read. Being a non-American, I found the 'rah-rah America is wonderful, everything about us is greater than everyone else, and all these silly Europeans will want to be just like us' rhetoric so over the top and disgusting that I wanted to throw the book away so no-one else would ever be contaminated by it.
And what could have been good about this book was simply absent - the culture shock of transplanting characters back into the past, the clash of cultures finding a way to co-exist, taking the best from both to build something new. That could have been wonderful, but it simply was never there. All the Europeans simply throw away their beliefs and their way of life the second they see the so-called wonderful culture that America will bring to them.
And everyone in the American contingent seems to think nothing of getting their own way by violence. Men, women, teenagers. All ready with a gun to shoot the savages. I don't live in a place where this sort of violence is ever acceptable.
No thanks. Not for me.
One good thing though - there are now a huge pile of books coming off my to-be-read pile, as nothing on earth could convince me to every continue this series.
Right there I was totally put off this book, but I persisted. At 100% in I realised I was reading one of the worst books I had ever read. Being a non-American, I found the 'rah-rah America is wonderful, everything about us is greater than everyone else, and all these silly Europeans will want to be just like us' rhetoric so over the top and disgusting that I wanted to throw the book away so no-one else would ever be contaminated by it.
And what could have been good about this book was simply absent - the culture shock of transplanting characters back into the past, the clash of cultures finding a way to co-exist, taking the best from both to build something new. That could have been wonderful, but it simply was never there. All the Europeans simply throw away their beliefs and their way of life the second they see the so-called wonderful culture that America will bring to them.
And everyone in the American contingent seems to think nothing of getting their own way by violence. Men, women, teenagers. All ready with a gun to shoot the savages. I don't live in a place where this sort of violence is ever acceptable.
No thanks. Not for me.
One good thing though - there are now a huge pile of books coming off my to-be-read pile, as nothing on earth could convince me to every continue this series.