[ShadowsOfEurope] Penta Reviews SOE, Italy Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Penta]

OK...Italy gets its own section. Because its hot, and I'm tired.

I'm reading in small bursts.

Now...

OK, my general opinion of this section increasingly is that of what I've seen thusfar in this book.

It was written by locals (or at least Europeans) for locals/Europeans. Not for what I would have thought would be its intended audience, everybody else beyond Europe. At least, that's how the book is feeling.

IMHO.

Now, focusing on the section itself:

The Vatican/the RCC was a nice try, but fell far short. Some of this, Synner, is just the arguments we've always had, made worse because you tried to put the ENTIRE RCC into a European SB. (Looking at "trying to prevent schism" and then "female priests"...The two can't mix. There'd be such a schism (Latin America would go *insane*) it's indescribable.) It did no justice to the topic, and the decisions made seem utterly mad when viewed not from a European perspective, but globally.

Other bits are just what time since has showed us (for instance, the recent succession).

The whole RCC section pretty obviously was a one-man job, Synner...And it feels like it. Some input from Americans, Latin Americans, and others would have been so very welcome. If it were me, I would have left the RCC for a section in Loose Alliances, sized as the entire Italy chapter was here. As it is, if I didn't know you, I'd think you had an ax to grind, because the whole section feels like "Yeah, yeah, the Church is as crazy as it always is for a bunch of old men. Who cares?" If this is going to be the foundation for the Church in SR, I'd prefer SR didn't touch it, period, because it just...Ugh.

Not the intention, I figure, but it just doesn't feel like it was anything more than a brush off.

Then, too, there was so much time spent on the Church in General that Rome/the Papal States got the shaft. There's not enough to work with.

The rest of Italy suffers from this same problem. It feels very, very, very rushed, and...Well, it's bad.

It's really, really bad.

This section? Two thumbs down, way down.

Book as a whole? Not sure yet.