Ring of Fire II by Eric Flint, etc.

Book 6 started, Book 6 finished

Ring of Fire II by Eric Flint, etc.

Published by Baen Books, 2008

Continuing on in the Ring of Fire universe, this time with an ‘official’ anthology.  It’s somewhat hard to comment on these stories as some are in recently read copies of the gazettes while others are new novels but here I go …

Of all the stories, one of my favorites in this collection is one of the shortest stories, Ellis Island by Russ Ritters.  This is the story of a Jewish family with nothing trying to get to Grantville in the snow in search of a better life.  It’s just touching.  It could have been a heavy-handed attempt at sympathy or a pale comparison to OUR Ellis Island, but it’s not.   It’s just a wel-done story.

Malunga Seed by Jonathan Cresswell-Jones is another I particularly enjoyed.  An African Jesuit, Mbandi, shows up at Dr. Nichols door late one night bearing chinchona bark and seeds, the plant needed to make quinine, and stories of life in Changes to Brazil and hoped for changes in Africa.  It’s a good story with lots of interesting details about these two 17^th century continents. 

To a degree, it seems the information about chinchona and quinine getting from Germany to Brazil to trigger the plans and start this story rolling is a lot to happen in a relatively short time, but A LOT has happened in this universe in the 4 or 5 years since Grantville arrived in 1631.  But, that’s part of the fiction so I guess I’ve accepted that so much rapid change will happen.

The Main Novella anchoring the book is The Austro-Hungarian Connection by Eric Flint.  This is in part about Austria’s attempts to gain technology from Grantville.  In this instance, they’ve received some openly but have also convinced some Americans to defect and to steal tech as part of their plan to flee.  The rest of the story then is Nichol Murphy’s attempts to stop them.

Nichol Murphy, now Stull, is one of the characters who only really appears in the short stories but is an interesting woman who pops up fairly regularly as a field agent for the State of Thuringia-Franconia.  She’s a bit of a loner and an interesting character who’s been developing nicely as a person throughout these different stories and this one is no different.

Overall, this isn’t the best book in the collection but it’s a solid 3-stars and an enjoyable continuation of the series.