Reading Wednesday: Two Free Portal Fantasies I Couldn’t Get Through

[rachelmanija]

1632, by Eric Flint.

A chunk of a modern American town, including the entire local chapter of Mine Workers of America, is mysteriously transported into 1632 Germany. What those people need are red-blooded Americans with lots of guns!

This is kind of hilariously what it is. Apart from Flint being pro-union, it is exactly like every sweaty right-wing fantasy ever, complete with the lovingly described slaughter with lovingly described guns of nameless evil people whom we know are evil because we see them randomly torturing and raping the hapless, helpless villagers. The rape and torture is lovingly described, too. There are also loving descriptions of various engineering projects.

Typical excerpt:

Mike spoke through tight jaws. "I'm not actually a cop, when you get right down to it. And we haven't got time anyway to rummage around in Dan's Cherokee looking for handcuffs." He glared at the scene of rape and torture. "So to hell with reading these guys their rights. We're just going to kill them."

"Sounds good to me," snarled Darryl. "I got no problem with capital punishment. Never did."

"Me neither," growled one of the other miners. Tony Adducci, that was, a beefy man in his early forties. Like many of the miners in the area, Tony was of Italian ancestry, as his complexion and features indicated. "None whatsoever."

Gave up on this. It’s not that I never enjoy this sort of thing. But I have to really be in the mood for it. (Appropriate mood: Snark locked and loaded.)

Free on Baen. Yes. Of course this is a Baen book. There are the obvious exceptions, like Bujold, but Baen has more of a house style than Harlequin.

Stray, by Andrea Host.

An Australian teenager steps through a portal to a strange world, where she survives on her own for a while before being rescued by and taken to another world, where she becomes a lab rat for a bunch of psychic ninjas who fight alien monsters!

This sounds completely up my alley. However, this is my third try at reading it, and I have never gotten farther than 30% in, and I had to force myself to get even that far. It’s written in the form of a diary, which means there’s no dialogue and it’s entirely tell-not-show. I’ve read books like that which I’ve really enjoyed (Jo Walton is extremely good at that type of narrative), but this one never caught my interest. It’s certainly very ambitious— for instance, Cassandra does not speak the alien language, nor does she instantly learn it— but I found it dry and uninvolving.

Sorry to all who recced it so enthusiastically! I will try something else by Host, but I’m giving up on this one. That being said, everyone but me seems to love it, and it’s free on Amazon, so give it a shot.

Stray (Touchstone Book 1)

Comments

[recessional]

Ahahaha 1632. Much like Stirling's Emberverse, I make more use of it by stealing the setting and throwing other-fandom chars at it than anything.

He is also Wrong about the Authorship (lack of) Controversy, which irks me these days.

[snarp]

Time-travelling UMWA chapter is a beautiful concept. I am thus disappointed that that excerpt reads exactly like an sarcastically-faked excerpt would.

[rivkat]

That first one sounds just like Leo Frankowski! Don't remember if those were Baen. Also as I recall he was more about the "funny" sexism. I liked the books when I was a kid until they really started to skeeve me out.

[staranise]

I adored 1632 as a slightly drunk Happy Adventure that is so relentlessly, cheerfully jingoistic you either start tapping your toe to the marching band's rhythm or drop the hell out. However, its sequels are so much worse, and so bloated, they're not even worth trying after a couple of books (and if 1632 has one literary merit, it's zippy pacing).

[yhlee]

Heh, an acquaintance recommended 1632 to me. I suspect I would enjoy it in a certain mood, but...yeah.

[skygiants]

OMG, 1632 is free on Baen right now?! I have such hilarious memories of that book from my childhood that ... I might have to reread it ....

(Did you get to our noble and persecuted Jewish heroine Rebecca before giving up?)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Stray: maybe if you skip up to when the aliens get her? (If you already did that, then maybe this one just isn't your cuppa.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I read well into where the aliens get her. Endless pages of not quite understanding the language, being a lab rat, being bored, sort-of interacting with people she has no personal interest in and whom I can't tell apart. I read about 15 pages past into the part where she discovers her psychic power, then decided that if that didn't interest me, nothing would.

I think this one just isn't for me.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

If you do try another, I suggest Medair, which has a different vibe altogether--more epic in feel, slightly elegiac. Could be this author just isn't for you.

(With you on the Flint, found it totally unreadable, though it sounded like something I'd love.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I think what I struggled with the most was the combination of no relationships (I don't mean romantic - I mean that Cassandra wasn't emotionally connected with anyone in any way) and no dialogue. Is Medair different?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

She eventually does build relationships, but the pace might be a bit slow for you. And she really does stay central pretty much through all three books, so if you don't like her voice and her slant on events in the first, good chance you won't cotton to the rest. Book three nearly pushed me past the edge of too much tell rather than show, and I was invested.

Medair also features a woman alone (I think most of her books have that as a starting point) but yeah, she begins building relationships quicker. Some are adversarial, but there is connection, rather than that existence in the lab rat bubble. Eventually, even, she begins fighting the connection, and there are reasons--Medair is my favorite of them, I think.

[naomikritzer]

I was in the right mood for 1632 because I read the whole thing and enjoyed it. And then I read 1633. And after that I'd have had to pay for them or track them down at the library plus there was piles of it and I was a little mystified by the order...so that's where I stopped.

The thing that I found sort of fascinating was that it was totally a "noble outsiders civilize the savages!" story, but (kind of) guilt-free because the savages in this one are 17th century Germans. Are you engaging in colonialism if the people you're civilizing are essentially your own ancestors?

In the sequel, I was really pleased by the fact that at least some of the temporal locals were smart enough to figure out what had happened and react sensibly. So, for instance, Cardinal Richelieu goes to a lot of trouble to have one of his spies get him a history text, which he then uses to his advantage. The technologies also get picked up and spread fast, so the advantage the Americans have is thoroughly temporary.

On the downside, the most charitable description I can come up with for the characterizations is "generally two-dimensional."

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Was it Brian Daley who wrote the kind of ur-work (although possibly Poul Anderson or L. Sprague de Camp started this, or even Mark Twain) in which a Vietnam-era American tank crew are transported to fantasyland? I just remember the cover. There was a tank.

[axolotl9.livejournal.com]

There's a short story from the 1950s called something like "Hawk Among the Pigeons" in which a jet fighter is transported back to World War I...

And is largely useless. There's not enough metal in WWI planes to show up on his radar, so he can't use his missiles, he can't fly slow enough to get them in his gunsights, and a single mission uses up all the locally available kerosene (the closest thing WWI has to jet fuel). He basically ends up using his supersonic shock wave to knock a couple of enemy planes from the air, and then joins the infantry.

There's another story I recall, possibly by Keith Laumer, in which a modern soldier is transported back to the medieval period and finds himself completely outclassed by the style of warfare in that period, plus the tech is not sufficiently advanced for him to duplicate his (modern) weapons. So he kills lots of enemy until he runs out of ammo, and then he's taken down by a berserker charge.

And of course, there's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" by Mark Twain, the granddaddy of them all.

Flint has specifically said that the town in 1632 is based on the town in which he grew up. Yee-haw, West Virginia!

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything matching that on Daley's ISFDB page.

[phantom_wolfboy]

You are thinking of Daley's The Doomfarers of Coramonde in which a Vietnam War APC is summoned to fight a dragon. It helps that is from our world and time. He was trying for a tank.

[robby.livejournal.com]

Ha! I finished 1632, but am guessing there are sequels, which I don't care about. As I recall in 1632, one of the guys, years ago, had luckily buried an illicit .50 caliber heavy machine gun in the woods. Of course they dug it up and put it to good use. This sort of gun stuff is almost a genre of its own. I read another similar story, where a cargo trailer that *just happened* to be transporting a large shipment of single shot shotguns was transported with them into the past. Just the thing for a low-tech age, don't you know?

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what to do when you run out of ammo for your futuristic-by-contemporary-standards guns would be a major problem for this type of story. I read the book years ago and don't really recall what Flint did about it, but he takes a pretty nuts-and-bolts procedural approach generally to how the characters cope with the lack of tech support/"there's no more where that came from" problem inherent in suddenly being plunked down in 1632 with only whatever supplies already happened to be in the geographical area that got transported. So there's probably some major story thread I've forgotten in which the chief twentieth-century badasses in charge assign somebody to start smelting ore and making bullet molds, etc., so they can eventually produce makeshift replacement ammunition for their massive pile of modern weapons.

[robby.livejournal.com]

Much of the story thread was how to sustain the tech advantage that they had. They had a machine shop and power source (natural gas?) and eventually had union factories up and running.

If you like hard science fiction, check out The Martian, which details the challenges of a man abandoned alone on Mars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Andy_Weir)

[axolotl9.livejournal.com]

Actually, they quickly decide that they need to dial back the tech to something that can logically be made in the 17th century, then move forward from there as they can build back toward the 20th century base. So, starting with black-powder muzzle-loading rifles using minié balls, and fabric-cartridge ammunition for artillery pieces which Gustavus Adolphus had already standardized for his army.
The gun buried in the guy's backyard was an M60, which is a 7.62mm "GP" machine gun, not a heavy like the M2 .50 caliber (which would be a bit obvious if someone was trying to sneak that out). And he only has something like 500 rounds for it, after which it's a boat anchor. But, of course, West Virginia so lots of people have handloading rigs, so as long as the modern powder holds out, there's ammunition for the "up-time" weapons.
There's a later book (1634? maybe) where one of the opposing forces gives them a nasty surprise because they've sent spies who discovered a nifty little gadget called the Ferguson Rifle - a breechloading, paper-cartridge, flintlock rifle. (In actual history, fortunately for us, the British considered it an interesting idea but never developed it, and then the inventor, Major Patrick Ferguson, got himself killed during the American Revolution in a quality-vs-quantity situation - 50 guys with [relatively] quicker-firing, more-accurate guns does not trump 1800 guys with muskets.)

[egelantier.livejournal.com]

Mike spoke through tight jaws. "I'm not actually a cop, when you get right down to it. And we haven't got time anyway to rummage around in Dan's Cherokee looking for handcuffs." He glared at the scene of rape and torture. "So to hell with reading these guys their rights. We're just going to kill them."

...wait, so these are real quotes? not parody? because, lol.

this is somehow reassuring to know that horrible portal books are not the sole purview of new russian fantasy, no lie. i mean, it's still not as bad as most of nowadays traditionally published stuff, BUT STILL.

[estara.livejournal.com]

I don't know about everyone loving Stray: from the Goodreads reviews it seems to me that either people like Cass's voice and the way she tells her story, or they don't - and so there's no middle ground, heh ^^. The thing is, of course, that the whole world of interaction opens up as soon as she meets other people, but those first 100 pages in the book don't have them in it, true enough.

It is the only diary novel (formerly an online blog entry, per day, from what Andrea said at Loncon) she has written, so any other Höst book will not have that hurdle for you.

If you liked the idea of Australian female teenager SF, you might like her only other version of it so far, And All the Stars - which was nominated for the Cybils and in two categories (SF and YA) for the Aurealis Award in the year it came out.

Her other books are fantasy with older heroines, although Hunting is probably Fantasy NA.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I did get to the part where Cass meets other people - I gave up when she'd met the psychic ninjas and discovered her psychic power, and I was still bored. However, I enjoyed (and reviewed) And All the Stars a while back.

[estara.livejournal.com]

I had vaguely remembered that you did, but I thought I had actually misremembered thatwhen you wrote "I will try something else by Host," - I read that as meaning you hadn't read anything from her before.

My memory is really not very good and not getting better. Sorry ^^ - .... aside: oh, did your friend who was at the Michelle Sagara West kaffeeklatsch at Loncon 3 (and whose name I also forgot :P) tell you 'hi' from me?

[carbonel]

I'm not sure what led me to read 1632, but I enjoyed it, despite the cardboard characterization. Then I tried the sequel (1633, natch), and bounced off it -- several times. I can't figure out what was so grabby in the first book that was missing in the second one.

[axolotl9.livejournal.com]

Well, do you enjoy reading David Weber's books? Weber wrote a lot more of 1633 than Flint did.

[carbonel]

I didn't realize that David Weber wrote a substantial portion of 1633. That may explain why the prose just didn't grab me.

I read the first couple of Honor Harrington novels back when, but didn't finish #3, and never went back to them. I guess I'd rather reread Elizabeth Moon's Familias Regnant books, even though those have their own problems.