Search - 1635: The Dreeson Incident (The Ring of Fire)

I'm rather disappointed with this book. There is actually only a tiny amount of content that actually moves the overall plot of the series forward, so I feel that I've waded through a lot of irrelevant gossip to get to it.

Reading this was kind of like working my way through a tangled hedge. You can tell that the authors (I guess DeMarce specifically) really enjoyed constructing the dense interconnections of characters, the interactions of which take up most of the book. It's not even entirely uninteresting if you can keep track of who's who. The trouble is that I don't see the point of it all from a storytelling angle. What did all these banal conversations have to do with the state of Thuringia-Franconia? I'm still not sure.

The title incident happens almost as an afterthought. I had trouble detecting a story arc from beginning to end, and I was also annoyed that almost everything is relayed to the reader by way of exposition--endless dialogue between a multitude of characters. All telling, no showing. I really think a ruthless editor would have done this book some good by pruning away most of the mass and exposing a glimpse of the plot occasionally.

Read this only if you're a series completist. Anything significant here can be picked up by context in later books.