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A review by mfeezell
1632 by Eric Flint
1.0
This book is a fascinating deep dive into the mind of the average Gen X white man. He's convinced that he and his friends are the ultimate Mary Sue characters who, if thrown into a war, would use their expert wits and alpha masculinity to save the day despite having no real skills or experience with anything relevant to the situation at hand. It's also is an excellent example of how prejudice can manifest in people like the average Gen X white man, someone who adamantly believes they are not a misogynist or a racist because they aren't some laughable cartoon-ish version of a bigot. They don't want women or POC dead, but they also don't really believe they're full humans either, instead imagining them as caricatures of their identities and not real people with agency. The female characters are given just enough to do to be impressive or desirable to the male characters, but never enough to really make their own decisions outside of the classic trope of a woman being the smartest person in the room, but only using that intelligence to gentle parent the men into making the right choices, instead of being given any real power or leadership themselves. There's also a distressing amount of "romance" in the book (to use the term as loosely as possible), which is of course agonizing to read because none of these characters act like real people. Also, half of the couples are teenagers who keep getting married within weeks of knowing one another (and in one notable case, within days of the teenage girl being liberated from LITERAL sex slavery), yet we're supposed to find these couples noble or inspirational or romantic somehow.
The POC in the book, meanwhile, consist of one black man who is referred to as "the black doctor" a distressing amount of times, and talks about being from "the ghetto" constantly as rationale for why he's so calm in the face of violence. This character trait also seems to exist to give the white men some kind of seal of approval that they're the cool white men that even this black guy from "the streets of Chicago" approves of. James is the only non-white character allowed to be in scenes and speak, with the only other non-white person existing solely off screen, and only named a handful of times. She is a Vietnamese woman, who is implied to be a refuge of the Vietnam war that this American veteran married and brought over to West Virginia, and exists only to be the butt of jokes about how the fish sauce she uses to cook her scary foreign dishes is gross or something. I don't expect much from historical fiction, but it is embarrassing that this book is from 2000 and is somehow more ignorant than other books I've read from over 100 years ago.
I think what annoys me the most is that the historical aspects of the book are actually well-written and interesting. Those chapters (which are essentially well-written RPF, let's not lie) actually have interesting people and ideas within them, especially when Flint explores some of these generals as horrible people they were, but still real people with complex thoughts and ideas that drove them to do the things they did. But these sections serve only as window-dressing for the lives of the fictional characters, who are all so horribly written and dull that it spoils your enjoyment completely before you get to another chapter about what was actually happening in 1632. If your interest is in the 30 years war, or history in general, I would highly suggest simply opening Wikipedia and browsing around for a while. It'll save you time.
The POC in the book, meanwhile, consist of one black man who is referred to as "the black doctor" a distressing amount of times, and talks about being from "the ghetto" constantly as rationale for why he's so calm in the face of violence. This character trait also seems to exist to give the white men some kind of seal of approval that they're the cool white men that even this black guy from "the streets of Chicago" approves of. James is the only non-white character allowed to be in scenes and speak, with the only other non-white person existing solely off screen, and only named a handful of times. She is a Vietnamese woman, who is implied to be a refuge of the Vietnam war that this American veteran married and brought over to West Virginia, and exists only to be the butt of jokes about how the fish sauce she uses to cook her scary foreign dishes is gross or something. I don't expect much from historical fiction, but it is embarrassing that this book is from 2000 and is somehow more ignorant than other books I've read from over 100 years ago.
I think what annoys me the most is that the historical aspects of the book are actually well-written and interesting. Those chapters (which are essentially well-written RPF, let's not lie) actually have interesting people and ideas within them, especially when Flint explores some of these generals as horrible people they were, but still real people with complex thoughts and ideas that drove them to do the things they did. But these sections serve only as window-dressing for the lives of the fictional characters, who are all so horribly written and dull that it spoils your enjoyment completely before you get to another chapter about what was actually happening in 1632. If your interest is in the 30 years war, or history in general, I would highly suggest simply opening Wikipedia and browsing around for a while. It'll save you time.