Eric Flint's '1632-verse' series of books describe events in an alternate history of Europe in the thirty years war that occurs after a West Virginia mining town of the late 1990's gets zapped back to central Germany in the year 1632 (as a result of alien tomfoolery).
In reading a few of the 1632-verse (Assiti Shards) books, from Eric Flint, I've come to realise, (a) they are entertaining and rather good, (b) they are numerous, (c) it is hard to know what to read and what might be skippable, depending on likes, dislikes, time available, etc. To aid me in my journey through some of these books, I drew up a chart that shows the order of the books from an internal chronology standpoint, and also records who wrote them and how well they are regarded.
The chart indicates the titles in bold, with sub-series within the 1632 world grouped in a colour-coded fashion. The authors are then recorded, and lastly for each book, the average rating on Goodeads is shown. You start at the top, and time progresses as you drop down the chart, with books that roughly overlap in time shown across the chart left to right.
Now, I realise this will all be of limited interest to most, but I thought I'd post the chart seeing as I'd drawn it up for myself, and now there's a thread for the series, I'll probably post comments on future books here too.
In reading a few of the 1632-verse (Assiti Shards) books, from Eric Flint, I've come to realise, (a) they are entertaining and rather good, (b) they are numerous, (c) it is hard to know what to read and what might be skippable, depending on likes, dislikes, time available, etc. To aid me in my journey through some of these books, I drew up a chart that shows the order of the books from an internal chronology standpoint, and also records who wrote them and how well they are regarded.
The chart indicates the titles in bold, with sub-series within the 1632 world grouped in a colour-coded fashion. The authors are then recorded, and lastly for each book, the average rating on Goodeads is shown. You start at the top, and time progresses as you drop down the chart, with books that roughly overlap in time shown across the chart left to right.
- The blue-shaded books are "core" novels and are mainly written only by Eric Flint (two co-written with David Weber). They are generally very well regarded (high scores on Goodreads). I've read the first three of these and can recommend them (albeit with reservations for Parson
) - The Ring of Fire books in yellow are short story collections. I've not read them, and the positioning in time is roughly accurate, but they can cover a fair bit of ground I believe)
- The light orange books co-authored by Virginia DeMarce are not "core", but they cover key events. However, they are not so regarded and you could skip through to 1635: The Eastern Front without tackling them if you liked. I'm actually planning on skipping them all.
- The green shaded titles are the Papal series, set in Rome/Vatican. They are co-authored by Flint and either Andrew Dennis or Charles Gannon. The later Gannon ones are supposed to be better then the Dennis ones, but I'm not sure if you can read these and not the initial ones in the sub-series.
- The light blue 1635: A Parcel of Rogues carries on a sub-plot directly after 1634, and looks good - I'll be reading in next.
- From 1636, they all are supposed to be well written and are well regarded.
- There are a bunch of Grantville Gazette collections of short stories and non-fiction pieces about the times. They occur throughout the timeline but I've not included them here -there are about 80 available to read online or in e-format!
Now, I realise this will all be of limited interest to most, but I thought I'd post the chart seeing as I'd drawn it up for myself, and now there's a thread for the series, I'll probably post comments on future books here too.
