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3	%%* AntiClimaxBoss: [[spoiler:Quevedo]] from ''The Cannon Law''.
4	* ArcFatigue: Some of the plot threads have extremely long waits between books and new books that move at a slower pace than fans would like (with the South European plot line being a notable example).
5	* HilariousInHindsight:
6	** In ''1632'', four years before Mike Stearns becomes a successful major general:
7	--->'''Gayle:''' Ain't you just the proper budding little Na-po-lee-own?\
8	'''Mike:''' Give me a break. The day I become a military genius is the day hell freezes over.
9	%% Blank line, hoping to fix formatting of bullet below:
10	*** Made doubly so when the battle that cements his status... happens in a snow storm. And just to cap the climax on that, one of Napoleon's most famous battles, at Eylau in early 1807 against the Russians, was also fought in a snowstorm... and Stearns actually did ''better'' at Dresden than Napoleon at Eylau, which was basically a draw for him (the first major battle of his career that he hadn't won).
11	** In a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain moment in the first book, Wallenstein orders the attack on Grantville and says to kill even the dogs because [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain they "might be a Jew in disguise."]] One HazyFeelTurn later, and most of the stories centered around Jews are taking place in Wallenstein's own backyard.
12	** [[Manga/Amakusa1637 There exists a 2001 manga]] in which a group of people from the [=2000s=] went back in time to the [=1630s=] and alter history there. It has no relation to this series.
13	* HomeGrownHero: An American coal mining community, of all places, gets transported back in time and plunged into UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar-era [[UsefulNotes/TheSixteenLandsOfDeutschland Thuringia]], inadvertently injecting the war-stricken Europe with some modern American values? Right.
14	* MagnificentBastard:
15	** Sultan Murad, who is currently the most effective enemy of the U.S.E., spending years pretending to be in denial about the Ring of Fire (well, at least part of it is pretending) before launching an attack with modernized airship weapons. He learns from his defeats (such as by training snipers off his own), is determined to re-write his old page in the history books, and is known for actions such as executing some of his men [[YouHaveFailedMe for fleeing in battle]] but ordering one of his officers to pretend to give the dead men's families pensions in defiance of Murad (when really it was Murad's orders) to inspire loyalty among the other airship crews to that officer.
16	** Spymaster and assassin Pedro Dolor from the Vatican plotline serves as TheHeavy against Ruy, Sharon, and the others. Dolor is a mysterious, imposing figure who appears out of nowhere to serve Cardinal Borja, working to thwart the goals of more sympathetic characters (such as by ambushing one of Harry's rescue missions or infiltrating a city with the intent of killing the Pope). Dolor is fully willing to thwart the sympathetic goals of the heroes and kill any subordinates who become liabilities to him, but he is also utterly disgusted by the rampant sadism among many of his allies. His efforts are designed to gain more trust from the usurper Pope and the Spanish crown, who he plans to turn on once he achieves enough power, in revenge for being abandoned on the streets of Madrid and ignored by Spain's nobles as a boy.
17	** Salqam-Jangir Khan, head of the Kazhak Khanate, is hired to attack the heroes of the Russian plotline. Upon realizing that the Russians will make better allies than enemies, he quickly switches sides, while taking the MouthOfSauron character who hired him prisoner and turning the guy over to Bernie and his allies as a sign of good faith. Khan becomes a subordinate of the Russians on paper, seeing it as an opportunity to get them to support his dynasty as hereditary governors and forestall any coup attempts. Salqam then proceeds to become head of the new nation's pro-slavery faction but is willing to allow slaves to have the right to vote, signifying that they are not to be seen as subhuman and may elect representatives who are more likely to free them. Khan also pledges to execute any of his nobles who try to control the votes of their slaves, suspecting this will give him a chance to execute his political rivals.
18	* MoralEventHorizon: The ClassyCatBurglar in the second half of ''Two Cases for the Czar'' seems like a LovableRogue until Miroslava reminds her boyfriend (and the readers) how he callously robbed a prostitute of her life savings just to test his lock-picking skills. Later on, the guy reinforces this negative impression by murdering a soldier to steal his uniform.
19	* RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap: John Chandler Simpson, in magnificent style. In ''1632'', he was a conservative CEO and businessman who looked with scorn upon the rural, working-class citizens of Grantville, and his political agenda in the days immediately after the Ring of Fire would have gotten everyone killed. But beginning with the short story "In the Navy" and continuing in ''1633'' and ''1634: The Baltic War'', he is put in a place where all of his skills as an organizer, military thinker, and uptight martinet with an undying love of protocol and discipline could do the absolute most good; the fledgling United States Navy. Not coincidentally, "In the Navy" was written by Creator/DavidWeber (who also co-authored ''1633'' and ''1634: The Baltic War''), a naval historian and himself a far more conservative personality than Eric Flint; John Simpson would fit ''right'' in with the [[Literature/HonorHarrington Royal Manticoran Navy]], and in fact echoes of the RMN's shipshape, well-disciplined "Saganami Tradition" are easily visible in the fledgling USN.
20	* {{Sequelitis}}: Naturally, some of the later books don't live up to the hype of the earliest ones, with ''1636: The Atlantic Encounter'' being noticeably unpopular one for doing practically nothing to move the plot forward and just involving various unsuccessful meetings with American colonies to discuss an alliance against the French which seems less important in the wake of the French Civil War plot line. ''1635: The Dreeson Incident'' is another highly unpopular sequel, chiefly because of the author's technical shortcomings as a fiction writer, which became especially glaring when she was forced to carry a full-length novel almost alone because of Flint's serious illness at the time, and because of her fixation on genealogical details and the minutiae of complicated interpersonal relationships.
21	* SurprisinglyImprovedSequel: ''The Atlantic Encounter'' is one of the least entertaining and most skippable books in the series. Its follow-up work ''Coasts of Chaos'' has been very enthusiastically received by both fans of ''The Atlantic Encounter'' and people who've never read it.
22	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: In such a vast SharedUniverse, with so many characters who become SacrificialLamb's, SacrificialLion's or are simply OutOfFocus, there's bound to be a few.
23	** Gerri Kinney, a {{Goth}} with the interesting twist of being an up-timer working as a prostitute with some established personality, but who ends up killed in the first pages of her first appearance (a mystery story following the investigation into her death).
24	** BadassBiker Buster Beasley, who gets a particularly notable DyingMomentOfAwesome that (as far as the plot was concerned) didn't actually require him to die.
25	** Kid archeology student Mikey Tyler, whose only been in a few short stories so far.
26	** Harry's crew member George Sutherland, a OneManArmy who could have been kept around as a [[spoiler:CrusadingWidow rather than getting a HeroicSacrifice soon after the death of his wife.]]
27	** Quentin Underwood spends most of the first book getting some CharacterDevelopment and working well with his former rivals, like Mike Stearns, then proceeds to spend the next couple books being pointlessly obstructionist then being killed off.
28	** Grantville bartender Fenton Maase was interesting enough in his two short story appearances but never showed up again.
29	** In "The Seas of Fortune" foreman Kiyoshi gets some nice AFatherToHisMen and ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight scene when he kills a samurai overseer trying to keep them working in a dangerous flood. He tells his men they'll MakeItLookLikeAnAccident, which seems to be setting up a promising subplot, only for the flood to wash all of them away anyway before they can reach safety.
30	** Philosopher John Milton, who hasn't been heard from in a long time (both InUniverse and in terms of book publication) after refuting his past political theories to survive, but with some reluctance and only with the urging to do something else impactful with his talents.
31	** "The Legions of Pestilience" seems to do its best to kill off supporting characters from the previous books by that author in a DroppedABridgeOnHim fashion and while certainly some of them dying to emphasize the bleakness and heartbreak of the plague was necessary, losing [[spoiler:Fred Pence, who'd just lost his mother-in-law to the plague and could have had helping his family through that]] and [[spoiler:ColonelBadass Derek Utt, who also had a good backstory fo his family being left up-time]] can feel frustrating. Especially given the TooDumbToLive nature of those deaths (and a couple of others) in taking care of a cat which belonged to a previous plague victim and that they should have realized was plague carrier itself.
32	** Among the Magdeburg police characters, there's Detective Honister, whose a nice presence in one novel and one short story but then has dropped out of sight.
33	** Jimmy Anderson of the "Four Musketeers" spends almost twenty years worth of books being just a SatelliteCharacter to Jeff and Gretchen (even Larry, who's killed off in his third appearance, was more developed) and is ultimately [[spoiler:[[MurphysBullet killed by a stray bullet]] without ever getting any form of ADayInTheLimelight in a relatively minor conflict after almost twenty years of being a supporting character.]]
34	** IntrepidReporter Joe Buckley has a decent amount of both resourceful and FearlessFool moments as he starts re-inventing investigative journalism (while initially being an UnwittingPawn), and could have been a good mainstay of the series. Instead, he's killed about halfway through the only book he appears in.
35	* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic:
36	** While there's a certain logic to Mike's using the murders in ''The Dreeson Incident'' as an excuse to target the antisemites, the fact that his doing so helps the real killers (who continue to murder people across the books) escape can be frustrating, especially given how it might not have been too implausible for him to do both. His explanation of what he's doing comes uncomfortably close to to "violently suppressing ideas absolutely works."
37	** Cardinal Richelieu can be hard to read as an AntiVillain at times after all of the ruthless stuff he gets into and doesn't regret against the up-timers when he could have negotiated with them (and ultimately does anyway once defeated in a war which kills thousands), which makes him feel not very different from other EvilReactionary characters.
38	*** It should be noted that Eric Flint did not ''want'' Richelieu to be an antagonist, but felt he was the only down-timer powerful and cunning enough to give the up-timers a challenge, so maybe that's kind of the point.
39	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: ''Coasts of Chaos'' provides an interesting look at the colonies in North America, but never even ''mentions'' the Japanese colony in California from ''Seas of Fortune.''
40	* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: Eric Flint is an avowed card-carrying Socialist, former union organizer and rabble-rouser. The series is enjoyable even if you do not subscribe to Socialism (as, fully in line with Marxist ideals, 1630s Europe needs some good old fashioned bourgeois values before you can even ''think'' about building communism or Socialism) but if you're versed in Marxist theory, you can predict certain plot points with remarkable accuracy. And Mike Stearns is such a MagnificentBastard in part because he knows a thing or two about organizing people and about Marxist theory.
41	** People who may be perplexed about Flint's apparent "liberalism" and {{Eagleland}} tendencies should recall two things: first, he's a Trotskyist (as pointed out elsewhere, he worked as a labor activist in West Virginia under the aegis of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers' Party), not really a Leninist and for damn sure ''not'' a Stalinist or Maoist. As such, he rejects the authoritarianism/totalitarianism and dictatorial policies of most communist regimes of the past century, and the series can be seen as his discourse on how to do Marxism right. Second, with regard to the United States, Marx, during his own lifetime, and his followers during the mid-19th century actually viewed the USA as a progressive nation, particularly in comparison to the outright reactionary regimes controlling most of Europe, and the American Revolution as a epochal revolutionary move forward in human history in accordance with Marx's theory of history. Marx himself was a staunch supporter of the Union during the American Civil War, even corresponding with Abraham Lincoln. (Another prominent left-wing figure of the period, August Willich -- who emigrated to the USA after the 1848 revolts, and who was so radical that he once challenged Marx himself to a duel for being, in his view, insufficiently revolutionary -- became one of the best brigade-level Union commanders in the western theater during the war.)
42	** Another political position that Flint espouses is that politically-motivated assassinations almost never succeed in their avowed objective. He makes this particularly clear in ''1635: The Dreeson Incident'', where [[spoiler:French Huguenot extremists assassinate Mayor Henry Dreeson and a prominent Grantville clergyman, the Reverend Enoch Wiley, in an attempt to touch off an anti-Semitic pogrom and plunge the USE and France back into war. What ends up happening instead is that the Committees of Correspondence virtually exterminate anti-Semites throughout the country. This has a major follow-on effect in ''1636: The Saxon Uprising'', where the destruction of Germany's anti-Semites significantly handicaps the reactionaries led by Axel Oxenstierna in their attempt to roll back the revolution brought by the uptimers.]] In fact, the murders and attempted murders carried out by the aforementioned Huguenot extremists and their leader Michel Ducos, who tried to assassinate Pope Urban VIII in ''1634: The Galileo Affair'', seem designed to point up Flint's argument, right through the latest such incident in ''1636: The Vatican Sanction''. In that book, [[spoiler:Ducos' terrorists attempt to murder Pope Urban VIII again at an interfaith conference. As it happens, they do end up succeeding -- but neither they nor the public at large will ever know it; the public attempt failed, but Urban was killed by a slow-witted member of the team who tried to flee pursuit after the public fiasco by hiding in the Pope's lavatory. The chief result of Urban's death is that he's succeeded by none other than Cardinal Bedmar, Ruy Sanchez's old superior and long-standing friend, who was a long-serving professional soldier -- a general, in fact -- before transferring to the Catholic clergy, and who is dead-set against the usurper Borja and all his works; indeed, he's likely to fight even harder against Borja than Urban ever did.]]
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Context YMMV / SixteenThirtyTwo