1636: The Devil's Opera by Eric Flint and David Carrico
Cover art by Tom Kidd
Published by Baen Books
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
When Eric Flint first wrote 1632, it was the story of an ordinary West Virginia coal mining town thrown into extraordinary circumstances, and how everyday people rose to the occasion. But as the story grew beyond the bounds of that one novel, those ordinary people steadily rose far beyond their humble beginnings. A high school principal became the president of a new nation. The head of the union local became the prime minister to the emperor of a nation that never existed in our timeline. A nerdy kid becomes a senior military commander.
On one hand, it's great to see beloved characters succeed and gain favor. On the other hand, it can end up alienating the readers who came to the series as a result of something that no longer holds, whether it be ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations or the underdog struggling against the odds. So the author often feels the pressure to win back that original audience.
Unfortunately, it's often done very badly. Time and again I've seen the author decide to effectively throw away everything the characters have accomplished in order to put them back into the situation that originally confronted them. For instance, if the first novel involves the protagonists on the run from a tyrant and the major quest is to unseat the tyrant and restore a just and equitable government, the author may suddenly have our heroes unseated by a usurper and sent back on the lam. This sort of response has the effect of suggesting that the protagonists' solution to the original problem was in fact a flimsy and inadequate one.
Fortunately, Eric Flint isn't the sort of author who is apt to just throw out everything his protagonists have won in order to maintain the drama. Instead, in this novel he and junior co-author David Carrico return to the series' roots by allowing the original protagonists to move to the periphery and focus on a new group of ordinary people suddenly thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
The arrival of Grantville in the early Seventeenth Century has created extraordinary opportunities for not only the population of that small West Virginia coal mining town, but also for the multitudes of ordinary people among whom they have landed. When King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden declared that Magdeburg should become the capital of his new continental empire, it became the focus of an enormous explosion of social and economic opportunity, the sort that sends people from far and wide in search of a better life. There are the new industries made possible by the knowledge brought by the uptimers, which will need multitudes of people to build and staff the factories. But there will also be many other opportunities for people in the various endeavors that will support the workers at the factory, whether the simple and homely such as grocers and tailors, or the more frivolous such as entertainers.
This novel tells the story of some of the people who were drawn to Magdeburg in search of the opportunities it promised amidst the ruin of the Thirty Years' War. It takes place roughly concurrent with the events of 1636: The Saxon Uprising, while King-Emperor Gustavus Adolphus was convalescing from the traumatic brain injury that disrupted his mental faculties and would ultimately lead to his decision to withdraw from the direct governance of his realm in favor of his daughter and future son-in-law. However, those events are background, and while they do have their effect on the storylines, they are not front and center. In fact, the closest they come is the titular opera, an adaptation of the story of King Arthur.
That storyline stars Marla Linder and her beloved Franz Sylwester, whom we met in the Grantville Gazette digital magazine and its print anthologies. In this story, they are commissioned to head up the creation and performance of the titular opera, which means that Marla has to find ways to reimagine the traditional story of King Arthur that will not offend the religious sensibilities of a downtime audience. One of the most fascinating elements is her re-imagining of Merlin as a Christian bishop. In D&D terms, he becomes a cleric rather than a magic-user, but in downtime terms, all his wonders become the workings of the Holy Spirit, and therefore there can be no question of valorizing witchcraft or satanic occultism. It also puts a very different flavor on his struggles with his attraction toward Nimue -- rather than just being the follies of an old man confronted with a pretty face, there is now the matter of his vows of clerical celibacy involved in his attraction to her.
Alongside their storyline is another, dealing with a boxer and a disabled orphan he views as his "luck." Hans Metzger is a rough man who often lives at the edges of the law, in a time when boxing is hardly distinguishable from street brawling. Yes, they're trying to introduce Marquis of Queensbury rules to the matches, perhaps from the influence of Mike Stearns, who once was a boxer, before he returned home to work in the coal mines and take care of his widowed mother. The world of prizefighting in this strange new world is not very far away from the criminal underworld, especially when betting is involved. There are people who want him to throw (deliberately lose) fights to the advantage of certain bettors, and others who want him to be involved in some shady dealings that may involve injuring other prizefighters.
However, in spite of his rough exterior, he's a good man at heart. Perhaps if he'd lived in a different time, a different set of circumstances, and particularly if he hadn't had to go through the horrors of the Thirty Years' War to get to the opportunities of this new city built on the ruins of the old, he might well have not considered it necessary to make so many compromises with his principles. For he truly loves his younger sister, who was left crippled in their flight, and who lives housebound in the tiny garret they share. She's a deeply religious young woman -- if Simon is Hans's luck, she is his conscience -- and she is pretty sure he's keeping a lot of what he does from her so she doesn't have to feel guilty about how she is provided for.
And that brings in yet another important thread -- the effort to create in Magdeburg a modern professional police force in line with the precepts set forth by Robert Peel during the Victorian era. This involves downtimers working alongside uptimers, learning the procedures of modern policing from the bottom up in a rough, brawling city where it's not unheard of to find bodies floating down the river. And one downtimer police officer is pretty sure Hans knows something about some murders that have happened around the city.
It's interesting to see how the authors weave together the two major storylines together, so the belle arts storyline and the criminal masterminds/ police procedural storylines move forward together, and interlink at more than a few places. For instance, there is the preacher who interacts with both Marla and Simon, the boy Hans views as his "luck." And there is the criminal who is trying to take Marla out, who has contacts with Hans. All of it is brought together for a very spectacular bang at the end, which also ties well with the ending of 1636: The Saxon Rebellion.
I really enjoyed this novel, so full of characters who would have remained at most "far trees" to be glimpsed at a distance in a typical novel of this sort. It's a fascinating look at how much the little people of the world make a difference in matters far larger than their own concerns.
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Review posted January 1, 2021
