1632 by Eric Flint

This is definitely a more fun way to learn about the 30-years' war than reading it in some old history book. Basically what happens is that a town in West Virginia is one day magically transported to Germany in 1632 (well, Thuringia, it's not Germany yet, although they speak German...never mind). And it's not magic, but for that explanation, you have to go elsewhere. This happens to be during the height of a conflict which raged across Europe. No land was safe from the wandering armies and mercenaries. Naturally, the Americans do the first thing any good American would do and start shooting the bad guys. If you're at all familiar with the technology of the time, you can guess how easy it would be for a guy with a modern 9mm to dominate a fight against guys using flintlocks. The only problem is, there's so many more of them than there are Americans.

The storyline centers around the town struggling to survive in the midst of this great upheaval and climaxes in a massive battle involving the Americans and a huge force of mercenaries. You can figure out how it goes.

The best thing about this book is not Eric Flint's writing. Sorry to say, he writes downright cheesy stuff sometimes, and he doesn't seem to know how to make people sound different in written form. And he doesn't write from the viewpoints of the bad guys. If at first you think somebody's bad, it ends up being "he was just doing what he had to do to survive" and stuff like that. The guys who are bad don't get any play, they just show up and die or disappear again. And one guy who I thought was bad got reformed. Well, that's just indicative of the completely optimistic and positive nature of the book.

The really cool thing about the book is how well thought out it is. This is no cheap dime-store fiction paperback. I mean, the man makes it seem very believable (and the "magic" that causes it isn't magic, but that's not relevant here). I mean, he really knows his business (well, he gets most of his knowledge from experts, but same diff). That, and the charcters, although sometimes flat, can still be rather enjoyable when he puts more effort into them.

It's worth reading to see what Europe was like at the time and to see how the modern characters adapt to the setting. And it's an easy read. It shouldn't take the average reader more than a couple of days of serious reading. Plenty of reason to read it.