1635. The Rhineland is in a witch's brew of turmoil. But an end is in sight. ( )

First, bookmark the list of characters, then enjoy the machinations as a real collection of feisty women take on the system and its cadres of venal males. Nuns, abbesses, wives, mistresses current and former, mostly downtimers with some good uptime role models. The multiple surnamed nobility showcases the need to protect the family dynasty as well as the rationale for significant inbreeding in a land of many duchies, small and large A niche filler but still interesting. ( )

This book really didn't work for me. There were too many characters, and far too little coherent narrative. It was a bunch of vignettes about a bunch of people, that barely formed any kind of story arc. Jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint every two pages or so really doesn't work. Using date + location as a tag doesn't work either - not with dates of adjacent chapters sometimes 1 day apart. (That can work, sparingly, to handle a few longer gaps, or in a well done epistolary story.) Simply trying to follow the story was too much like work. And what was the plot again?

In a few cases, story threads joined up. Others were connected by one character moving from Arc A to Arc B, for reasons in completely failed to notice. But basically it was like getting all the gossip of several extended families, without having any prior acquaintance with any of them. Approximately four people among these hordes even had coherent motivation.

I really didn't think this book could be as bad as other reviews I'd read suggested, but now I'm glad those reviews caused me to borrow it from the library rather than puchasing it. I'm somewhat of a read-everything-there-is fan of the 1632 series, and this nonetheless took me more than a month to drag my way through.

The author seems to be capable of writing decent short stories. My advice to her would be to stick with that format. ( )

This is an interesting view on some of the events following the "Ring of Fire". Some elements were quite riveting. While 1635 is part of the title most of the action took place during 1634. This is a good addition to the series. ( )

Some of the bits were fun, but a very scattershot narrative. With many of the virtues - enjoyable character romps, and flaws - people in power just don't speak and act like that, of the rest of the series. ( )