Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsFinally, more Bernie!!!
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2018
I've been waiting for this book for a long, long, long time. Like, since 1636: The Kremlin Games first came out. I understood the internal logic of making us wait so long for this sequel, (so many threads needing so many sequels, only so many 163x publishing slots available each year), but it still seems...uh...less than intelligent to leave a sequel to a NY Times bestseller on the back burner for so long.
One thing I really liked about The Kremlin Games was that you could follow the storyline even if you had only read the original 1632. So, if you're new to this series, you can read 1632 (available to read at the Baen Free Library of books online because the first taste is always free ;) ), then 1636 The Kremlin Games, then this book. Then, if you're finally hooked on this series, the threads spread out in all different directions. Some are less fun to read than others, but even the heaviest slogs (I'm not real big on theological explanations, for instance) generally have one major point to make before the end that make me realize that while I'm not necessarily going to re-read some of these, I'm very glad I persevered to get through to that one major point.
The major point which you get near the end of this Volga Rules books made my eyes open REAL wide as the characters tried to create a constitution which could weld together both "free" states with "slavery-legal" states into one coherent country in much the same way (and much the same reasons) as the original USA. Anything less than "everyone is created equal" is not really acceptable to modern Americans, but this team of writers came up with a variation which--logically--should allow slavery and serfdom to be phased out rather than simply "kicking that can down the road" to a future Civil War. Certainly it addresses the "why don't we have more people voting in our elections" issue. I originally was going to rate this as a four-star book, but simply thinking through how to review this book makes me realize that yes, I really do love the compromise they came up with. I also want to see how the rest of the countries (and in particular, the USE) respond to this compromise. Like the best of the 163x books, this leaves you wanting more.
Sadly, my local library system probably won't pick up this book since it's too dependent on more than one book and they seem to have made the decision to not try to carry every Ring of Fire book.
