Leigh Kimmel’s Reviews > Ring of Fire IV > Status Update

On the road, in a very bad situation, thanks to a wild pig. A sow with a litter nearby, so a very different dynamic from that of an actual boar. And then the peasant village they took refuge in wants to rob them -- not greed, but desperation. And Harry Lefferts rescues them, in his own hillbilly version of "you won't like me when I'm angry."

Eva sets her cap for Harry, and goes about seducing him as a matter of pride. She will not be one of his conquests, yet she will have her night with him -- and it looks like both of them are left wanting more.

What a difference a few days make -- between one chapter and the next, the disastrous events of 1635: The Papal Stakes take place, Harry Lefferts loses a big chunk of his team, including people Gerry and his brothers know, and comes back a very different man. Like Ken in Michael Z. Williamson's _The Weapon_, he'd gotten complacent in his success, and paid a terrible price.

Working out the logistics of following Lefferts on his mission.

A conversation with Harry Lefferts -- when he still has all his bravado intact, before that devastating moment when he failed, abysmally and some of his team died.

An encounter with the local Committee of Correspondence nearly goes very badly -- until Harry Lefferts steps in. This is still the brash, bulletproof Harry Lefferts of the early books, before his horrific failure to rescue Frank and Giovanna Stone -- which is one of the drawbacks of such a widely-branched 'verse: a story written later has a different impact because of knowledge of what will happen later.

No, this story isn't about a gangster or other criminal, but a woman who survived smallpox, and has been told that she is relegated to spinsterhood because of the scarring. And then the Ring of Fire deposited Grantville in the past and Everything Changed.

Discussion of religion in Brandenburg

Approaching the borders of Burgundy -- which in those days appears to have been to some degree a separate realm, given the concern about the grand duke's border posts. A reminder that the concept of a sovereign nation was far blurrier in this period than the present. The Treaty of Westphalia would be a major part of that change.

Another reminder of how deeply steeped in religion downtime culture was. Really making us feel it in a way that Mr. Flint often wasn't able to because his focus was elsewhere.