“At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.” It all feels a little too like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but not written as a burlesque.
There is a lot of desperate demand for the simple acknowledgment that America got a lot of things right, and had a deep commitment to doing better.
The books have some lengthy subplots exploring our nations sins, and dark parts. But the general framing is, "good people with good intent doing their best who fall short, get up and do their best again. And that is AWESOME!"
And that’s just one example out of many.
The Americans are a collection of unintentionally hilarious stereotypes - the rugged hero who saves the beautiful & brilliant damsel in distress and gets everybody swooning over him, the virgin nerd who suddenly gets appreciated by a strong girl, the badass teenager girl who shows all those prejudiced old fools how much ass a badass teenager girl can kick, oh yeah!
The 'native' characters are a bit better, because the author is constrained by historical records to make them slightly less cartoonish. Gustav Adolf (& related family) is the designated Good King but he's still an absolute king and occasionally a jerk as a result; Axel Oxenstierna and Richelieu get caricatured as villainous viziers but their reasons for opposing the New American Order do get at least a perfunctory acknowledgment. Non-historical 'native' characters are as two-dimensional as the Americans, though.
The reason I do not regret reading the series is that it scratches certain nerdy itches very very well. It's full of wikipedia-type fun facts that gets turned into plot points, like clothing dyes being a big deal, or customary laws of Early Modern Germany being an absolute clusterfuck, and of course all kinds of changing social mores from privacy in the presence of house servants to serving wine to children. It has funny nerd moments like Lennard Torstensson gawking over a micrometer, or when Richelieu is revealed to be the first leader smart enough to acquire a spoiler (a history book from the 'future') and take action over it, in that case refocusing away from costly European wars in order to consolidate control of the New World and set up France to become the dominant world empire in the timeline.
I think the short stories are probably the best part of the setting for an adult reader, because they have less focus on the sub-par characters and more focus on the fascinating peculiarities of the time and place. And while the History of kingdoms and religions got derailed pretty early in the series, making historical accuracy kind of a moot point, the little histories of craftsmen and traders get a chance to shine and be properly explored in the short stories.
I found them moderately enjoyable pulp adventure myself.
I've read all the Honor Harrington books/stories and basically nothing else by either of them. Every now and then I read the phpbb forums (forums.davidweber.net) because it's interesting to see conversations by people who have a pretty different worldview than me. Seems like pretty nice folks.
The one author whose book I just set down because it made want to puke was one by John Ringo (it was an ARC, don't worry, no money of mine went into his pocket).
https://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html
This review even coined the meme "OH JOHN RINGO NO" lol.
I can't say "good times" but i read a bunch of Ringo's books just because I couldn't believe how an original so bad could get multiple sequals.
Eh. Baen is (was?) a capitalist, and his publishing house operates likewise - if it sells, they'll buy more of it. I can respect that, even if it doesn't always result in great literature. (Honorverse novels used to be a major guilty pleasure, I'm not in any position to judge here.)