I love these anthologies. They always leave me wanting to know more about the "secondary" characters. It is also nice to catch up with some of the others who have gone off on their own adventures. Now I want more stories about Bocler, Bonnie Weaver, and the 3 auditors. ( )

More Ring of Fire short story goodness. ( )

Some strange stories, some gaps filled and a preface fraught with clues about forthcoming books make this a worthwhile read. ( )

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. ( )

Collection of short stories set in the successful (and fascinating) 1632 series about a West Virginia mining town plunked in the middle of the Thirty-Years War (well, more towards the beginning). ( )