1635

November 23, 2015
The 20th entry in Flint’s Ring of Fire alternate history series is, unfortunately, rather dull for much of its length. The novel has a promising start, with Oliver Cromwell and his party having just escaped from the Tower; they’re now rowing up the Thames. Accompanying Cromwell are several soldiers of the period, including stalwart warrior Alex Mackay, as well as three Americans from the year 2000 who have been transported back in time and made their home in 17th-century England. The Earl of Cork, King Charles Stuart’s chief counselor, sends his man William Finnegan in pursuit of Cromwell. After brief skirmishes near Ely, the chase ends in Edinburgh, with Finnegan and his men watching the Mackay house, and here the narrative drive stalls. Political and religious
maneuvering takes center stage for the bulk of the work, and it’s detailed enough that readers may wish for charts, graphs, and biographies to keep everything straight. A final burst of action gives the book a strong finish, but little is resolved in this extended chapter of a very long story.

August 28, 2006
Flint and Dennis's solid follow-up to 1634: The Galileo Affair
(2004), also set in Renaissance Italy, offers a deliciously Machiavellian plot. The temporally displaced modern Americans from Grantsville, W.Va., having met with a surprisingly friendly reception from Pope Urban VIII, who views with favor some of the 20th-century reforms instituted by the Holy See, run afoul of the Spanish inquisitor Cardinal Gaspar Borja y Velasco. Borja regards Urban's failure to condemn the whole lot to the stake as proof that the pope is unfit to sit on the throne of St. Peter, and believes that Spain's political and military power has earned it—and him—the right to pre-eminence. The cardinal orchestrates a campaign of dirty tricks and rabble rousing to undermine the pontiff's capable but nepotistic family. If this novel is not as rollicking as its predecessor, that may be because there really isn't anything funny about the Spanish Inquisition, Monty Python notwithstanding.