Andy Zach's Blog: The Unlikely life of Andy Zach - Posts Tagged "book-review"

1636: The Vatican Sanction by Eric Flint

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Wow! Eric Flint and co-author Charles Gannon managed to put a new wrinkle in 'Ring of Fire' series of alternate history novels. What did they do? They managed to write a mystery from the criminals' point of view and the heroes' point of view and keep the reader guessing what would happen to the very last chapter and page.

The set up is, Pope Urban II is fleeing for his life from Cardinal Borja who wants to kill him and control the papacy. What's got Borja's knickers in a twist? He's trying to get all the uptimers from Grantville West Virginia declared as agents of Satan, whereas Pope Urban is trying to bring Vatican II type changes into the 17th century.

So much for motives. Borja hires ruthless killers, who hire more ruthless killers, who are supervised by other ruthless killers until you wonder how many layers of puppet masters there are. The United States of Europe (USE), basically West Virginia in Germany uses radio technology and superior firepower to defend the pope who's holding an ecumenical council.

Lots of people die. Guns, bombs, grenades, oh my! And when the ammo runs out you always have people to be sewn up by Sharon Nichols, and people to be skewered by her husband, master swordsman and chief of Security Ruy, a Spanish hidalgo.

Recommended to mystery lovers and alternate history lovers everywhere.



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