We had a big snowstorm this week. I’m unemployed right now, which is not a
bad thing during a huge snowstorm, and I had my housetending chores out of
the way and supper in the crockpot so I settled down with this book and
just read. It’s a good book for a snowy day when you have nowhere to go.

The novel’s setup is fairly simple. An entire county of West Virginia is
mysteriously transported back in time, intact, to Germany in 1632. Power is
shut off, communications are gone and roads end in a clean cut at the
perimeter of the area. Those within the area are left to cope with what
supplies they have and good old American ingenuity. Fortunately, it’s an
area well armed with hunting rifles and hand guns. Fortunate also, they just
happen to be sitting on a viable source of coal with a town full of coal
miners and have the local power plant sent back with them. This is all
fortunate because they landed smack dab in the middle of the Thirty Years
War and the Inquisition among neighbors who live with the plague and believe
in witchcraft.

It’s an interesting premise and what Flint does with recreating the
situation of the Founding Fathers is a tribute to the democracy and the
American Way. And I don’t mean that cynically either. He puts the his
characters in a fantastic situation and then lets them struggle and develop
based on the principles we all talk about but never really have to put into
practical use on a daily basis because the mechanisms and institutions are
established. What would happen if they just went away? The heroes in this
book aren’t the theorists or white collar guys who run things. The heroes
are the working class folks who can get the power back on and deal with the
realities of producing food and heating the houses and defending the town
from the natives until negotiations can be made.

It’s not a staid book either. The culture shock of 20th century meeting 17th
century is funny in parts and full of rollicking derring do in others. I
kept thinking to myself that folks who are anti-hunting and anti-gun would
have a bird reading parts of this book. And my practical side kept wondering
what they are going to do for little things like, oh, toilet paper or
toothpaste or baking powder once the town’s supplies are gone.

Now I have to read the next one, 1633. It’s available on line at the Baen
website so I downloaded the first couple of chapters to see if keeps the same
tempo before heading off to the bookstore with my wallet.