The Romanov Prophecy - Steve Berry

Overall Rating : B.

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My second Steve Berry novel (the first was The Third Secret); this one is less Cri-Fi, and more action. Set in modern-day Russia, where the people have decided they want to return to having a Czar as a ruler, Miles Lord, an American Afro-American lawyer on business in Moscow, stumbles onto a prophecy that implies that not all of the Romanovs were killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

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What's To Like...

Lots of action from the get-go. It's heavy on historical references, which suits me just fine. Rasputin becomes a prophet, and Youssopov is re-made as a good guy.

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The book is a page-turner, and Berry once again doesn't bore you with page after page of philosophical preaching. Take a note, Dan Brown.

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What's Not To Like...

If there's such a thing as TOO much action, this is it. Essentially, this is a 384-page chase scene. The bad guys, professional assassins all of them, can't seem to hit an elephant from 50 feet away (much like in the movie Miami Vice, but that's a subject for another post). The hero finds the bad guys repeatedly and incredibly picking up his trail, and never figures out that someone close to him might possibly be tipping them off.

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Finally, the plot pretty much plays itself out with no surprise twists. You gotta have surprises when you're reading Cri-Fi.

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Talk About Implausibility...

The most important parameter for any historical fiction is its believability. And TRP fails that in one key area.

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No, I'm not talking about some of the Czar's family surviving. That's been a romantic, albeit highly unlikely hypothesis for decades. Nor am I talking about the incredible shooting inaccuracy of the assassins. You can rationalize that away as being subject to the divinely-inspired prophecies of Rasputin.

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The unbelievable part is the opening premise that a majority of the Russian people would for some reason want to return to Czarist rule. Pigs will fly before that happens. Some Russians may want democracy; some may want a return to the Communist days; some may want some sort of uber-nationalism; and who knows, some may want Dubnutz to come stay with them after we throw his a$$ out of office next year. However, the one thing they can all agree on - no one wants the return of the Czar.

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The Romanov Prophecy is another solid effort by Steve Berry. If it isn't quite on the same level as The Da Vinci Code, it's still a good read while we wait for Brown to get off his butt and put out another novel.

Island in the Sea of Time - S.M. Stirling

Overall Rating : A.

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IITSOT is part one of an Alternate-History trilogy where the island of Nantucket (and a bit of the seas around it) gets transported back in time from present-day to the Bronze Age of 1250 B.C. The first order of business is simply to survive the oncoming winter, since very few of the Nantucketeers are skilled in hunting, gathering, fishing, and trapping.

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What's To Like...

This is the best Alt-Hist book I've read so far. The plot moves fast; there's lots of action; and the meticuous research by Stirling is obvious.

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Unlike Eric Flint's 163X series, the Good Guys actually make a few mistakes here. And the Bad Guy, believe it or not, is not Evil Incarnate. He's ambitious, he's Machiavallian, and he's inventive. He and his cohorts manage to spring a number of surprises on the Forces of Goodness, which is a pleasant change-of-pace.

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The good guys' fighting hero is a gay, female black; which is certainly not stereotypical. And lest you think the author is trying to foist his bleeding-heart liberal philosophy on you, he also takes some rather reactionary pokes at gun-control, whaling, and tree-hugging. Yet all this is woven neatly into the plot. No page-after-page "preaching" such as Flint and even Dan Brown are given to.

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Finally, there's actually a climactic ending to the book, even though it's just the first of three volumes. Robert Jordan could've taken some pointers here.

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What's Not To Like...

There's too much space devoted to the technical part of sailing. Good lord, I feel like I'm reading a Tom Clancy novel.

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Stirling gets fixated on a variety of things. To wit, the sounds effects of war; the fact that one's bowels 'void' as one dies in battle (and the consequent stench thereof); the 'down-hominess' of the Good Guys' political hero.

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He also seems to spend a lot of time on the erotic thoughts of the lesbian pair. There's nothing wrong with Stirling giving us his insight in this matter, but you'd think that nothing else enters the minds of these two when they're not fighting and killing. Then there's the Bad Lady's penchant for S&M. Although Stirling handles the sex scenes better than Harry Turtledove does, one still gets the feeling that they're primarily there to make teenage boys hot and sweaty.

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Finally, the Sierra-Clubbing, AmerIndian-saving Pamela Lisketter is just too stereotypical to be believed.

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We Are Yankees, Hear Us Roar...

It should be noted that, like Flint's 163X series, we once again have a small, intrepid group of Americans enlightening the rest of the non-American past-world with our superior technology, government, philosophy, and overall goodness. Just once, I'd like to see something like a modern-day Chinese army dropped into, say, 1700's America. Or maybe the entire nation of 21st-century France. Or the 20th-century British Imperial Navy. Let's reverse the roles for a change.

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It should also be noted that Nantucket Island had an inordinate number of world-renowned history and industrial specialists on the Island at the moment of the time-swap. And a nearby Coast Guard steel-plated windjammer conveniently gets zapped into the Bronze Age along with the island. (*)

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None of these "picked nits" detract from the story, including the fact that a 100-pound Ninja babe can kick any-and-all 200-pound male, barbarian a$$. In reality, the odds of the present-day Nantucket surviving a year in the Bronze Age would be extremely long. Stirling is fully allowed to follow in Flint's footsteps (or is it the other way around?) and "stack the deck" in order allow the story to go on more than one winter.

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This book was a real page-turner for me. And ultimately, that's what counts the most when I read a book for pleasure. We'll give it a solid "A", and see whether the other two books in the trilogy can keep up the pace.

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(*) : Update (11/03/09)...

S.M. Stirling stopped by soon after I posted this in 2007 to let me know that all the skills and technology described in IITSOT did indeed exist on Nantucket in 1998, which is when he visited the island to research this book. Including the Coast Guard's steel-plated windjammer, "The Eagle". You gotta love it when an author takes the time to visit, read, and comment on your book review. (**)

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(**) : Indeed, this humbled me and made me a bit less snarky when writing reviews of someone else's literary efforts.

The Galileo Affair - Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis

Overall Rating : D+.

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1634TGA is the first "1634" book in the 163x series to make it to paperback. This time, the USE (United States of Europe) sends a diplomatic mission to Venice to develop strategic political and commercial alliances. Coincidentally, Galileo is going on trial in Rome for his allegedly heretical teaching that the earth revolves around the sun, and not vice versa. The protagonists in the book get to be both the defense attorney for Galileo, and his potential jail-springers.

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What's To Like...

There's 667 pages to make you feel like you're getting your money's worth of reading material. There's a number of new characters to get to know. Most notably, the resident hippie-cum-chemist, Tom Stone ("Stoner") and his three raised-in-a-commune sons. By "new", we mean they didn't appear in 1632 or 1633. They are introduced in the Ring Of Fire - Grantville Gazette anthology, which we'll review some other time.

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You get to get up close and personal with 17th Century Venice. And if you're burnt out on all the fighting and killing in 1632/1633, you'll find this a much lighter-hearted book.

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What's Not To Like...

There's very little action. 600 pages into this book, you realize there's been a grand total of one botched assassination attempt, one street brawl, and one pointless murder. The rest is, how shall we say it, drama. Sheesh, if I want drama, I'll go read Wuthering Heights. We read Alternate History for the action, and of course, the advancement of a parallel history.

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And that brings up the second shortcoming of the book. It doesn't contribute one bit to the new timeline. Oh, relations are established with Venice. And Galileo goes on trial. But none of the dozens of loose ends from 1632/1633 are addressed, let alone tied up.

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Worst of all, the theme of this book, "The Galileo Affair" comes off as unbelievable and shoddily written. The Swiss Guards appear to be the 1600's equivalent of the Keystone Kops. And although Father Mazzare gives a brilliant defense of Galileo, the author(s) don't see fit to give us any details of it. Both sloppy and lazy.

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Where Does This Road Go, and Why Is It Paved with Good Intentions?

It's hard to know who to blame for this book. One suspects 99% of this was written by Andrew Dennis, with Flint's only contribution being to add legitimacy to it by putting his name on the cover, and to make sure AD doesn't write anything into the plot that might interfere with whichever way Flint intends to develop his particular 1634 sequel.

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Flint's approach to developing the 163x world is certainly well-intended. He's allowing a number of other writers to contribute whole volumes to it. In theory, that allows "other viewpoints" to come into play. In practice, however, it means you're going to be reading a lot of meaningless, tangential "fluff".

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Two other 1634 books are out in Hardcover. 1634 - The Bavarian Crisis, and 1634 - The Baltic War. And Flint is supposedly working on 1634 - Escape From The Tower. So it appears we will be stuck in 1634 for quite a few years. And we'll be paying $7.99 for each and every plot-advancement, with the occasional rip-off of no plot-progress at all. I suspect, therefore, that 1634TGA will be the last book I read in this series, at least until the paperback versions start showing up at the used book store.

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But I digress. 1634 - The Galileo Affair is a well-meaning but ultmately boring tome. If you just can't get enough of 163x, this may tide you over until Flint finishes his own 1634 contribution. But for everyone else, you won't be missing anything important if you skip this yawner