Ring of Fire III (3) (The Ring of Fire)

The quality of the set of short story collections in this series has varied from book to book. This book, in my opinion, sets the highest standard in quality, standard of writing and enjoyability of any of the collections set in the Ring of Fire universe. Mr. Flint has not only done an excellent job of editing but has provided one of the best ( and longest ) stories in the collection, "Four Days on the Danube". I also especially enjoyed "All God's Children in the Burning East" by Garrett W. Vance which is set in Indochina, Les Ailes du Papillion by Walter Hunt which is set in North America and "Salonica" set in the Ottoman empire by Kim McKay. Since the forward indicates that that these three areas will be playing a prominent role in future books, this is a good sign for the continued viability and reader interest in the whole series; both novels and collections.

Write on, Eric Flint! Write on!

Ring of Fire III (2011) is the third Alternate History anthology in the [[ASIN:1416532811 Assiti Shards]] series. It contains a novella, nineteen short stories, a map, and a preface by the editor.

The Preface by Eric Flint explains the contents of this anthology and mentions future works.

"Dye Another Day" by Mercedes Lackey tells of a scam pulled on Wallenstein by the uptimers.

"Birds of a Feather" by Charles S. Gannon concerns Irish mercenaries who are facing a change in warfare tactics.

"Falser Messiah" by Tim Roesch is about a young Jew who disagrees with the uptime reports of his role in history.

"Royal Dutch Airlines" by Gorg Huff & Paula Goodlett regards the change of TransEuropean Airlines into a royal enterprise.

"Milton's Choice" by Mark Huston addresses the arrest of John Milton for his writings in the original timeline.

"To End the Evening" by Brad Sinor relates the rescue of a kidnapped Irish Catholic by D'Artagnan and Aramis.

"Cap and Gown" by Jack Carroll discloses the contributions of a dying man to mathematical studies at Cambridge.

"A Relation of the Late Siege" by Panteleimon Roberts reveals tactics and weapons at the Ottoman siege of Iravan.

"Frying Pan" by Anette Pederson depicts the trials of a young Norwegian man in Rostock on the Baltic coast.

"All God's Children in the Burning East" by Garrett W. Vance covers the troubles of Japanese emigres in the Siamese kingdom of Ayutthaya and their move to the Khmer kingdom.

"Do It Once and Do It Again" by Terry Howard explains the development of an oil well in Wietze and the subsequent difficulties of a French agent.

"Les Ailes du Papillon" by Walter Hunt discusses the Butterfly Effect and its influence on the life of a French governor.

"And the Devil Will Drag You Under" by Walt Boyes depicts the downfall of a mercenary and the influence of uptime thinking on his life.

"Salonica" by Kim Mackey recounts the conversion of a Jewish employee of the Ottoman sultan.

"The Sound of Sweet Strings: A Serenade in One Movement" by David Carrico introduces the banjo to European audiences.

"Stone Harvest" by Karen Bergstrahl is about the redevelopment of archaeology in the new timeline.

"An Eye Opener" by Kerryn Offord & Linda Davidson shows the benefits of early detection and treatment of eye disorders.

"Make Mine Macrame" by Virginia DeMarce involves the USE in diplomacy and romance within Tyrol and Saxe-Weimar.

"Upward Mobility" by Charles S. Gannon puts a young "hidden" Jew in the middle of an aircraft development.

"Four Days on the Danube" by Eric Flint is the novella. It describes the Bavarian attack on Ingolstadt. The USE troops have to withdraw from the city and march toward Regensburg. They are pursued by an infantry regiment and a cavalry troop.

This volume contains new tales by eight authors -- besides the editor -- who have previously contributed to these works. Moreover, Virginia DeMarce has also coauthored three works with the editor as well as [[ASIN:1439134545 The Tangled Web]]. Both Mercedes Lackey and Walter Hunt are scheduled to co-author future works within the main series.

Highly recommended for Ring of Fire fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of alternate history and cultural mixing. Read and enjoy!

-Arthur W. Jordin

The third RoF anthology was ok but because the universe of the series got too crowded with so many stories and side novels beyond the main storyline which is still excellent,I was left very meh overall by it; not even the usually dependable main author's (Eric Flint) novella contribution impressed me that much - the last 10 pages were very good but a lot of the rest was truly by the numbers prose I felt the author copy/pasted from other works and changed names and a little here and there. None of the rest of the stories stood out either though they were all readable.

The first anthologies had some great stuff that fit with the novels (Wallenstein, siege of Amsterdam etc) but could not be covered at length due to space consideration, here though...

As with the side novels I feel the saturation point has been reached and there simply are not enough interesting stories to tell anymore- or maybe not enough good authors beside Mr. Flint to tell them - since now almost all the angles of the mix between the 21 century Americans and the native 17th century people - tech, social, religion, arts, media, politics, etc - have been explored and what remains is an odd new world where the story crawls at the snails pace of the main plot that only Mr. Flint develops. It is telling that after 100's of stories including the Gazette and tons of novels we are still in 1636 essentially, so all is compressed in 5 years from the 1631 beginning of the original RoF event.

I am pretty sure this new world has tons of good stories and indeed it is fascinating to see what happens, but that is essentially the main storyline of Mr. Flint and as mentioned it is very slow going compared with the huge output of the rest of the writers.

Bring new mainline novels and stories out, cherry pick several side stories and forget about the rest and I think the series would be much stronger for it.

This third Ring of Fire collection (nineteenth volume of the Ring of Fire hypernovel) consists of nineteen short stories and a short novel:

* Dye Another Day, by Mercedes Lackey, *****-, 14 pages. Tom Stone tries to postpone the death of Albrecht von Wallenstein.
* Birds of a Feather, by Charles Gannon, ****, 16 pages. Irish mercenaries on the continent need to find a new employer.
* Falser Messiah, by Tim Roesch, *****, 21 pages. A young Jewish boy begins to learn about living in Grantville.
* Royal Dutch Airlines, by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett, *****, 22 pages. Fernando I, King in the Low Countries, buys TransEuropean Airlines.
* Milton's Choice, by Mark Huston, ****, 19 pages. John Milton is told he must retract what he hasn't yet written, or die.
* To End the Evening, by Bradley Sinor, ****+, 14 pages. Barnabas Marcoli helps Charles D'Artagnan and Aramis on a rescue mission in Venice.
* Cap and Gown, by Jack Carroll, *****, 32 pages. An English scholar returns early from Grantville to Cambridge and begins a new curriculum.
* A Relation of the Late Siege, by Panteleimon Roberts, ***, 20 pages. Murad's Ottoman forces besiege Iravan.
* Frying Pan, by Anette Pederson, 15 pages. **+, 15 pages. Lasse won't come home. He is on the run, sort of, in Rostok.
* All God's Children in the Burning East, by Garrett Vance, *****, 31 pages. A stupid new king forces the law-abiding Japanese community in Ayutthaya to flee for their lives. Dutch merchants come to their aid, transporting them to safety.
* Do It Once and Do It Again, by Terry Howard, ****-, 18 pages. Adolph Holz, for his own reasons, finances some locals near the Wietze oil field to drill their own oil well and partially process the crude oil.
* Les Ailes du Papillon, by Walter Hunt, ***+, 19 pages. Oneida chief Strong-Arm leads a war party of Hodenosaunee to Trois-Rivieres in Quebec.
It is sad that some of the American colonists seemed to prefer to adopt the ethnic pejoratives used by their enemies as the names of native American peoples, and that some of them stuck. Walter Hunt refers correctly to the Hodenosaunee, the people of the longhouse, rather than using the French `Iroquois' or the English `Cherokee,' (versions of "I have spoken with [joy / sorrow]" with which Hodenosaunees traditionally ended speeches) but instead of `Kahnyengahaga,' he uses `Mohawk,' which in the language of nearby Algonquians meant `cannibal.'
* And the Devil Will Drag You Under, by Walt Boyes, **, 16 pages. Georg tries to stop drinking.
* Salonica, by Kim Mackey,***+, 17 pages. Sampson Gideon is hard put to choose between Lara and Lina.
* The Sound of Sweet Strings, by David Carrico, *****+, 18 pages. A stranger at DJ and music teacher Atwood Cochran's door becomes his best student ever.
* Stone Harvest, by Karen Bergstralh, *****, 24 pages. Mike Tyler's archeological dig is trashed by con men who refuse to believe that he isn't digging for the kind of treasure they want to rob him of.
* An Eye Opener, by Kerryn Offord and Linda Davidson, *****, 11 pages. Optometrist Ursula Sprug builds up her business.
* Make Mine Macrame, by Virginia DeMarce, *****, 29 pages. Matthaus Trelli and his wife, Marcella Abruzzo represent USE in a three-way negotiation with Claudia de Medici and Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar.
* Upward Mobility, by Charles Gannon, *****, 23 pages. Esteban Miro helps Grantvillian Marlon Pridmore with his pet project, with a result he never anticipated.
* Four Days on the Danube, by Eric Flint, *****, 114 pages (including map). I would consider this short novel to be part of the [[ASIN:0671319728 Main Sequence)]]. A more accurate title would be "Four Days along the Danube," because the story involved land travel alongside the Danube, not the waterborne adventure the title leads one to expect. As a USE party attempts to escape from Ingolstadt to Regensburg, a party of Bavarians is sent to capture or kill them.

As with all the RoF volumes, highly recommended.

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There seem to be several different works written in parallel to the main time line Ring of Fire novels: "Grantville Gazettes" and the "Ring of Fire" Anthologies. This particular volume is by far the best compliation of short stories written in the 1632 universe by authors other than Flint, to date! Eric Flint also contributed a novelette in the form of "Four Days on the Danube," which was an excellent tale of military prowess involving Tom Simpson and several new faces to the ongoing story line. The introduction of airships/blimps/dirigibles, or gasbags in general, was overdue given the level of technology required for their production. We were introduced to the concept earlier in the volume by the short story "Upward Mobility." As usual, David Carrico contributed one of the better stories with "The Sound of Sweet Strings: A Serenade in One Movement," which involves introduction of the banjo and uptime classical guitars to the downtime musicians. And, wow! Even a story taking place in Southeast Asia with Christian Samurai warriors: "All God's Children in the Burning East."

These volumes have been somewhat spotty in nature prior to this, the third "Ring of Fire" collections of short stories, but this one "does it right." Kudos to author/editor Flint for smoothing things out and producing an enjoyable and easy-to-read volume. Five-stars-plus!

Though the third book of the Ring of Fire anthology series, "Ring of Fire III" is actually the 19th book of the actual Ring of Fire/1632 series; and as such it feels it's age. Originally created as a 'what if' of events when the present met past, this series by now feels like it has lost all focus of what to do and where to go.

Some of the stories in Ring of Fire III were pretty interesting. The gem of the group was Mercedes Lackey's "Dye Another Day". Maybe it's because she's a well experienced published author, but this first story in the book had the right balance of humor, character, and plot to make it an enjoyable read. Sadly, none of the other stories come as close to creating a well balanced story. Some might have an interesting plot, but suffered from a plethora of unmemorable characters; others might have interesting characters but were in plots so convoluted as to dilute their impact. And then there were some that just plain stank as the characters were just faceless window dressing to belch out dialogue to advance a sequence of events that could hardly be called a plot.

Then there's Eric Flint's contribution. The last story of the anthology, "Four Days on the Danube" is basically a semi-sequel to the book "1636: The Saxon Uprising", and acts as the lead-in for an eventual sequel to this storyarc of the series. Being the work by the creator of the Ring of Fire/1632 series, one can be forgiven to have somewhat high expectations that this story might somewhat redeem the reader's efforts for reaching the end of this book. Unfortunately, although the second half of the story was pretty interesting, it wasn't helped by the fact that character moments in the first half of the book seems to go off on tangents that at times effectively put the brakes on any momentum from the plot, a problem Eric Flint seem to have from time to time.

Ostentatiously written as a way to give story to behind the scenes and also to branch the series off into other directions, it's no secret by now that strength of story nor interesting characters is in abundant quality in both anthology series (Ring of Fire, Grantville Gazette). While it is admirable to allow fans of the series to become amateur authors, one gets the feeling that alot of the stories in these anthologies were given second treatment by an editor or just kept as fan fiction. Not to disparage any of the others, but the majority of the short stories seen in the anthologies seems to follow the formula of characters as mouthpieces to prove a moral, technological, or cultural point. That's fine and all, but without an interesting story to propel whatever plot the characters have to progress through, you're better off just writing a non-fiction technical piece instead. It'd be like a commercial that's trying to sell an idea as coming from the common person, but lays the delivery so thick as to turn the whole thing in to a caricature, but with no one laughing.

Another anthology of stories submitted by readers of the ROF series. Most good, a few great, a couple so-so.

I am currently reading this book with all the great stories by all the different authors. Sort of like a who's who of the field. So far, great!

Like all anthologies this is a mixed bag. The first story by Mercedes Lackey is a solid 4½, just misses being a 5 star. It tells the story of how Stoner and an accomplice get Wallenstein (the King of Bohemia and a critical ally) to be willing to work with uptime medicine--instead of Astrologers and con men. Told with a lot of sly humor and a good plot with good characters; just short of a home run. Unfortunately there are a couple two and three star stories (2 stars are better than average for the series and 3 stars much better). Those are balanced by the other 4½ star stories "Upward Mobility" and Eric Flint's "Four Days on the Danube". Virginia DeMarce wrote a good story about some complex politics and human relations. It would be a 4½ instead of a 3½ if any kind of map had been included.

Overall a very well done anthology.

This is not the place to start the series! Start at the start!