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| Ring of Fire II | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 29 2008, 11:34 PM (317 Views) | |
| Makkabee | Jan 29 2008, 11:34 PM Post #1 |
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Count
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Got this in the mail today. So far I've only liked one story in it, and even that one wasn't terrific. Granted, I've got most of the book to go yet, but this is the first book in the 1632niverse to leave me wondering this far in if I've wasted my money. I may have to stop buying the anthologies sight unseen and just stick to the novels if it doesn't improve significantly. |
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| Wyldstaar | Jan 30 2008, 10:42 AM Post #2 |
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Serf
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I picked it up the first week of January, and I barely remember any of the stories in it now. The only story in the book that seemed at all relevant was A Trip to Amsterdam by Huff & Goodlett. They're a good writing team, and have written some of the best stories in the Grantville Gazettes. This story is readable without having read H&G's Sewing Circle tales in the GG, but it make more sense if you have. That's the biggest problem with most of the stories in RoF II actually. Alot of them depend too heavily on the reader already being familiar with the characters through the Gazettes. I wouldn't mind this so much, if all the tales in the GG were excellent, but they're not. While some are very good, most are just readable, and a few are down right terrible. |
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| TR1 | Feb 3 2008, 03:41 PM Post #3 |
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Heir Presumptive
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I haven't exactly been wowed by this volume, either. Granted, I'm only two stories in, but the third one about raising the Vasa, has been fairly tedious, actually. |
| "Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman | |
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| Makkabee | Feb 3 2008, 04:54 PM Post #4 |
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Count
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I was okay with that one, though it took some time to pick up the pace. Except for the last story, none of them really had much of a point though -- it was all flavor text and no plot, or pretty close to none. There was some genuine plot development with the trip to Amsterdam story, but not really enough to cover that much verbiage. The final story kick starts a lot of eastern themes that will appear in later books, but was done in much too romance novelly a way to really work for me. I do want to know what's going on in Bohemia, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire, but this wasn't the way to introduce it. And I'm starting to get a little sick of these swashbuckler characters -- they're pretty fucking cardboard, if you ask me. |
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| TR1 | Feb 20 2008, 01:57 PM Post #5 |
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Heir Presumptive
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Well, I gave up. The trip to Amsterdam to save the dollar was the limit. |
| "Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman | |
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| Custer | Feb 20 2008, 11:06 PM Post #6 |
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Resident Kamikaze Warrior
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Wow. This book sounds like a yawner.
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9:16 AM Jul 11