Virginia DeMarce

To paraphrase Salieri in Amadeus, too many names, Virginia. Sorting the sects from the religions was difficult enough to make the book rather ponderous. But matching the names with their various apostasies, variations on a theme as well as who was related to whom was over the top. Localization should be used as a spice; by the pinch rather than by the shovelful. Interesting characters, some of which we lose later and enough of a storyline for a novella rather than a book

Complex enough to cause one to take notes. Recognition of the plague as a solvable, though very difficult, problem sustains the plot throughout this sojourn among the complexities of life fraught with class, caste and wealth differences that are very substantial. Lots of interesting characters dealing with the clash of up and down time societies. The reader will feel the need to keep identifying who is who by referring to the given lists or ignore them completely as I did assuming that I show more would read this book again. show less

Your review Interesting take on the social and political mores of the time. Sometimes a tedious slog but worth it. Names keep popping up that are not in the genealogy charts or the appendix. Some very interesting characters introduced that hopefully will be in future works. Wiping out the anti's, Semitics and witches, was clearly a simpler task in those days.

I like the Ring of Fire, but good God, this was tedious. The writing isn't totally clunky or anything, and there are some decent bits - anything relating to the actual plot was just fine. But a very large chunk of the book is devoted to the kind of infinitely boring family dynamics that are only of any interest to people who have to deal with those families at Thanksgiving. Seriously, if I wanted to read about small-town Appalachian dynastic politics I would be reading a totally different genre.