1635: The Wars for the Rhine

Written by Anette Pedersen

Narrated by George Guidall

An exciting addition to the multiple New York Times bestselling Ring of Fire alternate history series created by Eric Flint. Time travelers from our modern age are thrown into the deadly straits of the Thirty Years War in Europe of the 1600s.

In the year 1635, the Rhineland is in turmoil. The impact of the Ring of Fire, the cosmic accident which transported the small modern West Virginia town of Grantville to Europe in
the early seventeenth century, has only aggravated a situation that was already chaotic. Perhaps nowhere in central Europe did the Thirty Years War produce so much upheaval as
it did in the borderlands between France and Germany.

Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne shares the religious fanaticism of his older brother, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. He is determined to restore the power of the Catholic Church
over the middle Rhine, the so-called “Bishop’s Alley,” and has unleashed a plot for that purpose. But that same middle Rhine is territory which Landgrave William V of HesseKassel is determined
to seize for himself, under the guise of expanding the influence of the United States of Europe.

Add to the witch's brew the deaths in battle of Duke Wolfgang of Jülich-Berg and his son, which leaves his young widow Katharina Charlotte as the heir to those much-prized
territories. She is now on the run, in disguise—and pregnant. Add the unexpected arrival of Austria’s most capable general, Melchior von Hatzfeldt, along with the most ruthless spy
and torturer in the Rhineland, Felix Gruyard.

The wars for the Rhine have erupted, and only the devil knows how they will end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781980050988

Reviews for 1635

[bgknighton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

1635. The Rhineland is in a witch's brew of turmoil. But an end is in sight.

[jamespurcell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

First, bookmark the list of characters, then enjoy the machinations as a real collection of feisty women take on the system and its cadres of venal males. Nuns, abbesses, wives, mistresses current and former, mostly downtimers with some good uptime role models. The multiple surnamed nobility showcases the need to protect the family dynasty as well as the rationale for significant inbreeding in a land of many duchies, small and large A niche filler but still interesting.

[arlies-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book really didn't work for me. There were too many characters, and far too little coherent narrative. It was a bunch of vignettes about a bunch of people, that barely formed any kind of story arc. Jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint every two pages or so really doesn't work. Using date + location as a tag doesn't work either - not with dates of adjacent chapters sometimes 1 day apart. (That can work, sparingly, to handle a few longer gaps, or in a well done epistolary story.) Simply trying to follow the story was too much like work. And what was the plot again? In a few cases, story threads joined up. Others were connected by one character moving from Arc A to Arc B, for reasons in completely failed to notice. But basically it was like getting all the gossip of several extended families, without having any prior acquaintance with any of them. Approximately four people among these hordes even had coherent motivation. I really didn't think this book could be as bad as other reviews I'd read suggested, but now I'm glad those reviews caused me to borrow it from the library rather than puchasing it. I'm somewhat of a read-everything-there-is fan of the 1632 series, and this nonetheless took me more than a month to drag my way through.The author seems to be capable of writing decent short stories. My advice to her would be to stick with that format.

[john_t_stewart · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an interesting view on some of the events following the "Ring of Fire". Some elements were quite riveting. While 1635 is part of the title most of the action took place during 1634. This is a good addition to the series.

[quondame · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some of the bits were fun, but a very scattershot narrative. With many of the virtues - enjoyable character romps, and flaws - people in power just don't speak and act like that, of the rest of the series.