First few stories were good. The last one was just too long and boring though. The non fiction pieces were interesting and provides a lot of context into the world that Eric Flint has started. ( )

Nice supplement to the RoF world, I just became bored with the middle 2 pieces, The Rudolstadt Colloquy and Radio in the 1632 Universe. Now I know the latter was more informational, but it was downright boring! Anyway it was enough to give this a strong 2.5-3 star rating. ( )

(Alistair) Really, my first thought here was that I could probably just duplicate my Ring of Fire review here, being a very similar book in the exact same universe. And, really, my comments on the short stories contained therein are basically the same as the prior review, with the addition that contrary to my expectations - particularly as, as noted in the introduction, two of the stories herein were originally submitted for Ring of Fire, I think the mean quality of the writing is actually slightly higher.

On another additional note, the factual essays making up the last third of the book were fun. I do particularly enjoy worldbuilding, myself, and while the authors here are working with the existing world as it was, nevertheless a good description of the world the characters have to deal with is something I shall always read with pleasure.

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2009/04/grantville_gazette_ed_eric_... )

(Amy) Honestly, I don't have much to say about this that I didn't say about Ring of Fire earlier. It's a fascinating concept, and I remain unsurprised that dozens of people want to play with it. (I could wish that when they decided to collect the fanfic-class works for publication they had performed a rather deeper editing pass than they appear to have done, and eliminated the overwhelming proliferation of sentence fragments, but I suppose one cannot have everything.)

Some of the stories are excellent, a couple are good in concept but the writing is bad enough to have been a low-grade distraction throughout their length, and some read like chapters out of textbooks. About par for the Assisti Shards universe course, really. Still, I like the world enough that I'll keep reading, even these collections, which the smart money says will always be the lowest average quality of all the works in this particular shared universe.

Mildly recommended, but mostly for completists.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/zenos-library/2009/06/grantville_gazette_i_ed... ) ( )

I'd love to see the other books in this series. It's not heavy thinking unless you want it to be. Some of the fleshing out of basic thoughts about what would happen in such a situation are fascinating. ( )

apparently enough of these were sold for followups. Me? I got the free download.
Mostly first time authors writeing fanfic in Eric Flints 1633 universe. just about all read like fanfic.There is also an interminably long essay on horses then and now. Which I here by sumarise as follows..There are no decent heavy horses in 1633. None of the modern horses would be hardy enough for work in the period. If they are lucky the Uptimers might have one decent stud animal. ( )