world war 2 Archives

Yzabel / October 11, 2014

Review: The Red Magician

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

The Red Magician is the tale of Kicsi, a young girl in a backwoods Eastern European village in the early 1940’s, a hamlet so isolated that the villagers know nothing of the brewing war – have no hint of the future save for ominous dreams. Into this village comes Voros, a redheaded wanderer, a juggler and magician, to disrupt their lives and antagonize the local rabbi…with whom he must fight a cabbalistic duel to which Kicsi is a secret witness. Then the Nazis arrive, and the world changes. Kicsi is first imprisoned, then must journey with Voros back to what remains of her village, for a climactic battle between the old world and the new. The Red Magician is a notable work of Holocaust literature, a distinguished work of fiction, and a marvelously entertaining fantasy – as Philip K. Dick remarked upon its first publication, “nourishment for the mind and the soul.”

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of OpenRoad Media through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

An interesting short story, though I must admit it wasn’t exactly what I expected, and I ended up not liking it as much as I hoped.

On the one hand, I could easily feel the magic permeating the atmosphere, the strange aura surrounding Vörös. Moreover, there’s a golem in the middle, and I’m often very, very partial towards golems (everybody has their favourite mythological/magical creature; well, this is mine).

I liked the theme of revenge and misdirected anger woven through the story. Though not original in itself, it hit home, and the book managed to show how sterile and blind revenge may be, yet also how born from genuine feelings: when your fear and grief for your loved ones are so strong, and when you can’t actually strike at the real culprits, what else can you do? Wouldn’t you turn to the next designated villain in your line of sight—even though he’s not a villain, even though he’s not responsible?

On the other hand, I found that the characters in general lacked substance. I didn’t really get to “feel” the presence of Kicsi’s family, for instance, nor of her potential fiancé, and so their fates seemed almost as secondary. I kept wondering why Vörös didn’t fill a more active role: he could probably have done a lot more (alright, at some point he was missing some of his tools… but there might have been a way to retrieve them), and instead kept going away. This didn’t really fit with his claims of having wanted to warn people, to the point where his worry and eagerness actually achieved the contrary.

The Holocaust part, too, felt rushed, and not exploited in a way that could have made the novel really striking. I sensed that more could’ve been done to it, because the author definitely seemed to have a knack to describe both the camps and the life before them in a peaceful community.

Conclusion: a likeable story, with powerful elements that may not have been exploited to their fullest potential.

Yzabel / October 9, 2014

Review: Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror

Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror by Mike Tucker

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

“Well, I doubt you’ll ever see a bigger insect.”

Gabby Nichols is putting her son to bed when she hears her daughter cry out. ‘Mummy there’s a daddy longlegs in my room!’ Then the screaming starts. Kevin Alperton is on his way to school when he is attacked by a mosquito. A big one. Then things get dangerous.

But it isn’t the dead man cocooned inside a huge mass of web that worries the Doctor. It isn’t the swarming, mutated insects that make him nervous.

With the village cut off from the outside world, and the insects becoming more and more dangerous, the Doctor knows that unless he can decode the strange symbols engraved on an ancient stone circle, and unravel a mystery dating back to the Second World War, no one is safe.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Second Twelfth Doctor novel I read, and one I liked better than Silhouette. I’d say it’s typical-enough Doctor Who, perhaps closer to some of the older adventures than to the most recent ones, in its theme and some of its elements? Namely giant insects and technology snagged from the Nazis—there’s always something both eyeroll-worthy yet deliciously “old-fashioned” to find in such aspects, as far as I’m concerned. (“Old-fashioned”, in that it always reminds of older stories I was reading back when I was a kid and WWII/the Cold War were still present in our minds. Nowadays, these themes feel like they’re going further and further away from us.)

The Doctor and Clara investigate mysterious cobwebs and mutant insects in a small village known for its ring of ancient stones, as well as a few other curious things (either in the present or in the past). At first, they don’t seem to be really linked together, but the author makes all those lines converge together in a timely fashion.

Not having seen many episodes with Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, I’m not completely sure if the character in this book is really close to the one portrayed in the series. He felt close enough, at least, and clearly different from Eleven, at any rate. Clara isn’t always present, and depending on whether you like her character or not, this will be a good or a bad thing. I wasn’t too convinced, but that may be because I thought she didn’t have too much of an important role (and she should have—this is the novel where we learn Jenny taught her to pick locks, after all).

A few editing mistakes/typos, that I hope aren’t in the final printed version. The writing style’s alright: not too complicated, not too simple (with a couple of redundancies now and then, but nothing too bad from what I could see). Dialogues sound similar to the ones in the show. Overall, it indeed reads like a DW episode, and I liked that.

3.5/5 stars.

Yzabel / June 20, 2014

Review: The Bone Church

The Bone Church: A Novel by Victoria Dougherty

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

In the surreal and paranoid underworld of wartime Prague, fugitive lovers Felix Andel and Magdalena Ruza make some dubious alliances – with a mysterious Roman Catholic cardinal, a reckless sculptor intent on making a big political statement, and a gypsy with a risky sex life. As one by one their chances for fleeing the country collapse, the two join a plot to assassinate Hitler’s nefarious Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Josef Goebbels.

But the assassination attempt goes wildly wrong, propelling the lovers in separate directions.
Felix’s destiny is sealed at the Bone Church, a mystical pilgrimage site on the outskirts of Prague, while Magdalena is thrust even deeper into the bowels of a city that betrayed her and a homeland soon to be swallowed by the Soviets. As they emerge from the shadowy fog of World War II, and stagger into the foul haze of the Cold War, Felix and Magdalena must confront the past, and a dangerous, uncertain future.

Review:

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I wanted a change of pace with this book; I seldom read Cold War era fiction, which is definitely something I should remedy to. In a way, I got that, and something else, too.

The novel weaves two timelines, 1943-44 and 1956, that end up meeting each other, bringing loose threads together. The author always provided time and location, so keeping track of what happened when wasn’t too hard. I found the beginning of the story a little confusing, and still don’t know if it was because of the writing style, the changing timelines, or if it was just me; after a short while, things fell into place, and it was all right.

As for the historical context, I must admit I know next to nothing to Prague’s history, and I probably missed a few subtleties here when it came to the Infant of Prague and its importance in the plot. On the other hand, I had no problems piecing out those details, and I think the author provided enough information for me to enjoy it without having to stop reading, go learn a few things, and come back later.

Some scenes bordered on the “too much” at times; readers who don’t like that may be put off by those. For instance, Felix and Srut stealing a fire lorry to escape the Germans, then making their exit skating on the Vltava river. I quirked an eyebrow, while grinning at the same time. Part of me was “what the heck?”, and the other part went “nice one, guys!” It was a strange, somewhat elating feeling.

The atmosphere was permeated with a heavy sense of foreboding, with distrust, danger, suspicion, featuring potential traitors, unsuspected allies, and half-hatched plans thwarted at the last moment, always forcing the characters to get back on their feet, to react to the unexpected. However careful their plans, it was obvious they wouldn’t be able to go through them seamlessly, and this added to the paranoia and tension. Sometimes, too, surrealistic descriptions gave an extra edge to the action, especially when Felix was concerned: you never know at first if the people he sees are friends or enemies, real or only in his mind. It reinforced the feeling of something not right going on.

My main gripes with this story:

1) Some of the plot twists rested on characters that are seldom seen or, worse, appear once only. For instance, the nun, or the bishop, who’re mentioned once: when they do their particular deed. Such things don’t sit well with me in general. Here, they made the twists feel contrived, and I think the latter would’ve had more of an impact on me if said characters had been introduced beforehand, even in a couple of scenes only (like Andrea). As a result, those threads confused me, and threw me out of the story a few times.

2) Magdalena’s involvement, compared to Felix’s, felt like a secondary role. I would’ve enjoyed seeing more of her, more of the path she had to walk alone. She seemed to stand in the background, more spectator than actor, and this made her character less “real” in my eyes.

An interesting story all in all, but not exactly an easy read, and one that might have benefitted from a little more development when it came to some of the secondary characters.

Yzabel / September 30, 2013

Review: Quin’s Shanghai Circus

Quin’s Shanghai Circus by Edward Whittemore

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

Quin, born in China and raised in the Bronx, is orphaned in the closing days of the Second World War when his parents go missing and are presumed dead in Shanghai. Years later, in a Bronx bar, Quin encounters a stranger who hints that he can uncover the secrets of his past by accompanying Big Gobi, an adult orphan too simpleminded to travel alone, on a journey to meet his guardian in Tokyo. Quin arrives in Japan determined to uncover the truth about his parents’ past, but his search soon raises more questions than answers. What are the connections between a Russian anarchist, a one-eyed baron who is head of the Japanese secret service known as the Kempeitai, and the atrocities committed during the rape of Nanking? And what does any of it have to do with Quin’s parents?

Part espionage novel and part surreal fantasy, Quin’s Shanghai Circus, the first novel by Edward Whittemore, is a remarkable and audacious literary feat. Alive with a fascinating cast of characters and equally enthralling turns of events, former CIA officer Whittemore offers readers a mesmerizing glimpse at a secret history of the twentieth century.

Review:

(I got an ebook copy from the publisher through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

This book was a pretty weird one, in that I couldn’t honestly tell at first whether I was liking it or not, nor where it was going. At the same time, those very impressions (or lackthereof) may be what contributed to my appreciating it in the end, as paradoxical as it sounds. Reading it, seeing the story unfold, was like working on a jigsaw puzzle whose final picture I didn’t know, yet wanted to see no matter what. I always found myself coming back to my tablet to get to the next chapter.

It’s probably not a novel for just everyone. Some of the themes it deals with expose all the crass of human nature, through conflict between Japan and China and severe misdeeds from some characters(rape, murder, mutilation…), and such scenes are often depicted in a graphic enough way to be considered as disgusting. I admit those weren’t my favourite parts.

On the other hand, what I found fascinating were the relationships fitting within each other. This is basically what the novel is about: relationships above everything else, how they got shaped through events, what led to certain people to work together or become friends or lovers… The characters often had features that made them unforgettable, even bigger than life—something that may not have been convincing in another story, but felt somehow oddly logical and normal here.

“Quin’s Shanghai Circus” is definitely a strange book, sometimes disturbing, sometimes shedding light, on the contrary, on what’s still good in humans. “Read at your own risk”, I’d say.

Yzabel / September 6, 2012

Review: The Plot Against America

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

In an astonishing feat of narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threatens to destroy his small, safe corner of America — and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.

Review:

Hard to review, this one. I’m quite keen on Roth’s works in general, but I wasn’t so convinced here. I still found it enjoyable—just not as much as others of his novels.

What I liked:
* The “what if…” aspect (that’s why I had picked this book, after all). I have such a soft spot for these, especially when they involve American history and WW2.
* The way the story was told, through the eyes of a child. I think it allowed the author to toy (no pun intended) with a point of view that was both innocent and terribly lucid at times, in its ability to feel the raw intensity of events.
* The convincing narrative. I felt that the events unfolding in the story might indeed have happened, have been possible. It’s not totally far-fetched, on the contrary. And that’s precisely what makes it frightening.

What I liked less:
* The rushed half-assed end, and the impersonal way in which it was told. I found it really jarring, compared to the narrative style in the rest of the novel.
* Actually, Roth could’ve gone further with this story, and do more with it than (view spoiler)
* The fact that past that point, the author seemed to have lost sight of what exactly he was aiming at.