A New Celtic Legend

In the Region of the Summer Stars by Stephen R. Lawhead
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(I received an audiobook version of this courtesy of Macmillan in exchange for an honest review.)

Historical fiction writer Stephen R. Lawhead has been on my radar for a little while now, so when I was offered a copy of his latest, I jumped at the chance to read it!

If you like all things Celtic, In the Region of the Summer Stars is the book for you! Druids, faeries, war chiefs, oh my! I made an extensive study of the Celtics years ago and really enjoy learning about their culture, so this book rolls all over my wheelhouse.

Fast-paced action moves an exciting story that feels like a legend. At a Welsh tribal clan gathering, questions arise over what to do about invading Dane vikings. A hot-blooded young prince of a sort is confused by a lack of concern that an potent enemy upon their doorstep is not being taken more seriously and he goes off to investigate.

Part action, part mystery and a whole heaping helping of history go into In the Region of the Summer Stars. Lawhead has clearly put in tons of research. He layers on the details, occasionally bogging down a scene here and there, but perpetually building depth within his world to a degree reminiscent of Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. History buffs should enjoy this, while fantasy fans will find the druids and Lawhead's version of faeries earthily intriguing.

The always excellent John Lee was the perfect choice to narrate this. His deep timbre lends gravitas to the story and further strengthens its legendary qualities. The publisher has uploaded a sample from the book on Soundcloud. So, if you're interested in seeing if the narrator works for you or whatever, here's the clip: https://soundcloud.com/macaudio-2/in-...



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The Civil War As Seen From Slaves' Point of View

The Slaves' War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves by Andrew Ward
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A collection of quotes from former slaves with a focus on the Civil War.

This one's been sitting on my tbr pile for a while now. February seemed a good month to read it. Glad I did. I learned some surprising insights that made it all worth it.

The narrative is a bit disjointed at times since Andrew Ward is acting more as a compiler/editor than an author. It's quote after quote with a statement or two that mostly sets up a section or acts as a bridge of ideas when needed. Still, Ward relies on the former slaves' accounts without embellishment, so occasionally you get what feels like a non sequitur. Aside from that squibble, what you get are some tough-to-hear stories of humans being treated like chattel.

The author's note at the end was one of the most useful and necessary I've ever read. It answered questions I didn't realize I'd been forming while reading.

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A Showdown With An Archenemy

Sharpe's Enemy by Bernard Cornwell
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It felt good to get back in the saddle with rifleman Richard Sharpe! Sharpe's Enemy was one of author Bernard Cornwell's original books in the series. Written in the mid-80s it has all the rough and raw qualities I've come to know and love about these books!

Number fifteen balances the personal with the professional. We get plenty of fighting, Sharpe's expertise, and we get a bit of his fumbling family affairs, where he doesn't shine. Sharpe's long-standing feud with his personal nemesis comes to a head in a satisfying way. Victory and tragedy strike our tough hero and Cornwell deftly handles both.

Cornwell is great at weaving history into his fiction. Here is beats it like a blacksmith into the shape he desires. While some of the details are true to real life - there were deserters fitting the description described herein - Cornwell fudged some of the other details in order to place his main character at the center of the action. That's a-okay with me. I'm not reading these books for their historical exactitude. I just appreciate all the effort the author did make in getting the historical details correct. If you like reading fiction set during the Napoleonic Wars, you've come to the right place!

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Adventure and Politics in the Far East of the Early 19th Century

The Thirteen-Gun Salute by Patrick O'Brian
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Out of all of O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series up to this point, The Thirtheen-Gun Salute gets further away from the sea battles and life aboard ship to really delve into the interior of a new and exciting frontier (in the eyes of the characters as set in a pre-"Planet Earth" world) and paints a not-always-pretty picture of diplomacy in the Far East as it was some 200 years ago. O'Brian describes Maturin's romp into the countryside in such flowing and absorbing detail that it reads as vividly as watching any of those fancy nature programs David Attenborough makes.

There are no naval battles in this, the thirteenth episode of the saga. I mention it because that is such a big draw for many who read these kinds of books. However, this is Patrick O'Brian we're talking about, so all the rest that makes up this book is well worth the reading, because the reading makes you feel as if you're living it. You get the sense of an early 19th century voyage around the globe. You feel the tension of a diplomatic mission that may sway the war one way or another in this part of the world. You climb the 1000 steps to the ancient Buddhist temple where it shouldn't be on an island in Muslim Malaysia, and there you connect on a personal level with an orangutan. It's all amazingly detailed.

But action? No, this one's not filled with action. That being said, our courageous hero Captain Aubrey is still busy. He has a ship to run while contending with an envoy whose inflating sense of self may threaten everything.

Intelligence agent, naturalist and ship's surgeon Dr. Maturin takes center stage for much of The Thirteen-Gun Salute. It is a part of his character arc that culminates in a satisfactory, if somewhat devious, finish of a storyline that has been going on and on for book after previous book.

This is a gorgeous and subtle piece of fiction that can be enjoyed by fans beyond the action/adventure genre that one would assume it is. If you're new to the series, perhaps don't start with this book, but otherwise, this is highly recommended!

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A WWI Choose Your Own Adventure???

World War I by Gwenyth Swain
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A Choose Your Own Adventure styled book on World War I seems disrespectful. CYOA are written for fun. It would be like doing a Mad Libs for 9/11.

Once I got past that feeling and got done to reading this thing --and read it I did, for I can not help myself when it comes to a CYOA-- I actually enjoyed this a good deal. It treats the war and its participants with the honor they deserve.

Unlike all CYOAs I've read, in this You Choose book you choose from three different characters to play: a Belgian nurse, a British Tommy, and an American ambulance driver. Because it's broken up this way, while maintaining the usual short CYOA number of pages, the storylines within World War I: An Interactive History Adventure are necessarily short. Usually you get about a dozen pages per story before surviving or dying.

And there is a lot of dying in this one. More than any other CYOA I've ever read. Author Gwenyth Swain didn't pussyfoot around the bloodiness of this particularly gruesome war, at least not considering this was probably written for someone around 10-12 years of age.

Yes, it is short, so much of the war is criminally curtailed, but still, I learned a tidbit or two. Seems there's always something new to learn about this seemingly insane war no matter how much I read about it.

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A Story of the Korea War

Give Me Tomorrow: The Korean War's Greatest Untold Story by Patrick K. O'Donnell
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My grandfather fought in the Korean War. I can't really talk to him about it. Couple that with my impression that he's also not going to be with us much longer, so a natural and deep desire has brewed within me to know something of what he went through. This leads me to a book like Give Me Tomorrow: The Korean War's Greatest Untold Story by Patrick K. O'Donnell.

I know so very little about this war. The reasons for the conflict, the region, the location of individual battles, etc etc, it's all new to me. My ignorance hindered my enjoyment of this book. It made following the story difficult because I was trying to envision where it all took place, and while O'Donnell did a decent job describing terrain and conditions, I still felt lost.

That didn't deter from my appreciation of the story told and of the sacrifice made by the soldiers of George Company, the featured unit of the book. What they did during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir was incredible. Absolutely unbelievable. I highly recommend Give Me Tomorrow. It gave me a footing from which I will continue my education into a largely forgotten conflict.

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Leading the Band of Brothers

Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters by Dick Winters
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Major Dick Winters was a diligent soldier, caring humanitarian and just who you'd want to lead a troop of men into the worst of war zones.

He is most well-known from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks' World War II miniseries Band of Brothers, which dramatized the valiant efforts of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division from D-Day through to the end of the European stage of the war.

Major Winters' memoir takes a brief glance at his youth before diving headlong into his time with the army and his involvement in WWII. It finishes just as briefly, rounding out his post-war career and retirement, with a coda comprising some of the leadership topics he lectured upon for audiences towards the end of his life.

Winters' friend, the historian Stephen E. Ambrose wrote a great book about Easy Company's accomplishments. It takes a broad view of the war and the company as a whole. Then there are memoirs by other company members, such as non-commissioned officer Sergeant Donald G. Malarkey, which focuses much more on the men, their personalities and individual achievements. Winter's book is somewhere in between.

Beyond Band of Brothers is an officer's look at the war, and a very competent officer he was! The prose is soldierly efficient. Winters lavishes praise upon the men he served with and only occasionally he is critical. You can tell how damn proud he was to serve with these men, even when he's not flat out telling you.

I've watched the miniseries a number of times. I've read a few books about this company. I know the men's names. I know their faces. It is truly amazing what the went through. I'll always be thankful.


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Books Go Marching Off To War!

When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

They don't call them The Greatest Generation for nothing! I knew they were called that because of the sacrifices they made during World War II. What I didn't know was that part of their legacy was solidified after the war.

Soldiers in WWII LOVED to read. Some of them hadn't so much as picked up a book outside of mandatory school reading. However, when they got into the Army and Navy they realized they had a lot of boring down-time. Without video games and things like movies not being readily available or portable, soldiers turned to books.

In turn, books transformed themselves for the soldiers, who needed lightweight reading material. The publishing world's predilection for hardcovers didn't work mobility-wise. Thus paperbacks took off like gangbusters and millions were shipped around the globe to wherever the armed services were stationed. This was not an easy task and much of the book focuses on this undertaking.

I was fairly, though not 100%, sure what I was in for when I picked up When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II. I mean, I didn't expect to read about gun-toting novels marching off to war. On the other hand, could the title be referring to propaganda tracts printed and sent to the various fronts? Nope, it just refers to the dissemination of good old normal books, some of which became very popular amongst the ranks.

When Books Went to War describes how the reading generation of the war years created classics out of forgotten books -The Great Gatsby is one example- which now we take for granted as having always been consistently popular. That period also created a whole generation of educated youths who hungered for learning once they were done fighting. That was the big take-away of this book for me. The young men coming out of the war were disciplined machines with a drive and ability to consume knowledge. On the GI bill, they went to college and tore through more books, studying harder and getting better grades than the career students from rich families that prior-to constituted most campuses. The former soldiers then went into business administration and engineering on a scale never seen before. That, to me, is the lasting legacy of the Greatest Generation. It wasn't sitting on their laurels and patting themselves on the back for the brave and noble work they'd done during the war. It was what they were then able to accomplish after their tremendous sacrifice and struggle.

This is quite a good read. However, it's a book about books, so go into it with that in mind. It's not going to be a scorcher. When Molly Manning isn't writing about how books were transported and distributed, etc she's often giving a rather dry summary of the war. Having said that, you're here on Goodreads.com, so you're already a book nerd, ergo I have a feeling you'll get some level of enjoyment out of this. Now, I'm off to find a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to find out why it was arguably the most popular book amongst American soldiers!

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The History of D Company During WWII

Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe du Hoc--the Rangers Who Accomplished D-Day's Toughest Mission and Led the Way across Europe by Patrick K. O'Donnell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wants to be Band of Brothers and doesn't quite get there.

First off, I have the greatest respect for what these soldiers went through. It's because of that respect that I give my honest opinion of this book. Those who served in WWII deserve recognition for all they did. The men of Dog Company deserve a better book than Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe du Hoc--the Rangers Who Accomplished D-Day's Toughest Mission and Led the Way across Europe .

That's not to say this is a bad book. However, the legacy of Dog Company could have been better preserved. The writing herein is at times mediocre. Most of the time it's adequate.

The lay-out of the story is what suffers the most. O'Donnell repeatedly points to Pointe du Hoc as the pinnacle of Dog Company's accomplishments during the war. REPEATEDLY. And then he describes the Pointe du Hoc event in the middle of the book and then goes on to tell the reader what D Company did for the rest of the war in Europe. Putting the climax in the middle of the book makes for a second half that drags. It seems like O'Donnell was stuck in the linear storytelling mindset and didn't know how to tell the tale otherwise.

His characterization falls short of Band of Brothers as well. I didn't get the sense that I really knew these guys. O'Donnell tried to make them feel like old friends, but it never clicked.

However, the subject matter itself provided the bond needed to make one feel heartbreak upon reading of the death of one of these valiant soldiers. It truly was an amazingly horrific time in recent history. If nothing else, Dog Company is yet another testament to the valor and horror.

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An Easy Company Soldier In His Own Words

Easy Company Soldier: The Legendary Battles of a Sergeant from World War II's "Band of Brothers" by Don Malarkey
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What fascinating insight to an incredible, horrible time in recent history. Don Malarkey, a regular guy from Oregon, has written quite an impressive autobiography about his extraordinary WWII experiences.



And believe it or not, as of this day Sept 26, 2016, he's still alive.

His service is well documented here, but you may also know him from the engrossing Spielberg/Hank tv series Band of Brothers. If you've seen the series, you know much of Malarkey's wartime story. If you're intrigued enough to learn more, Easy Company Soldier is an excellent way to discover the backstory of one of the men on the frontline.

Consider all that this man has done: his heroism and courage in the face of death; his youth devoted to a career in soldiering; and yet, he is also able to write a better bio than a few professional writers I've read. Amazing. Simply amazing.

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Americans in Paris During WWII

Americans in Paris: Life and Death under Nazi Occupation 1940-1944 by Charles Glass
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the story of Americans and part-Americans in Paris, as well as in Europe in general, during WWII, not to mention leading up to the war, and in some cases well before the war.

Was that a clunky sentence? I'm afraid it mirrors my reading experience of Americans in Paris: Life and Death under Nazi Occupation 1940-1944 by Charles Glass.

It's a compilation of biographies of the more well-known or at least well to do Americans who decided to stay in France after the German occupation. Their individual sympathies run the gamut from Nazi sympathizers to fighters alongside La Résistance. Reading of their histories or hearing from their own words what it was like was the book's strong point for me. Unfortunately, most of the stories are about the upper class, the rich, and at best the intellectuals. Not much is heard the lower classes. I would've liked to have caught a glimpse of their diaries. But as with nearly all histories, this one too sticks with the big names, if you will.

That's all right. There's plenty of intrigue herein to keep most people with an ingrained interest glued to the page. Those of a political mind will get something out of Glass' sections on the Vichy government, the German-collaborate interim French government.

Consummate journalist Glass does a good job of giving the reader a chance to empathize with those who were on the fence with the German occupation, those who worked with the Germans in order to keep important French institutions operational until the liberation. It could not have been easy. The book has also been well-crafted so that readers are left wondering, as the world was, regarding the allegiance of a few of the notable fence-sitters.

Charles Glass earned his stripes as a war correspondent:

One of Glass's best known stories was his 1986 interview on the tarmac of Beirut Airport of the crew of TWA Flight 847 after the flight was hijacked. He broke the news that the hijackers had removed the hostages and had hidden them in the suburbs of Beirut, which caused the Reagan administration to abort a rescue attempt that would have failed and led to loss of life at the airport. Glass made headlines in 1987, when he was taken hostage for 62 days in Lebanon by Shi'a militants. He describes the kidnapping and escape in his book, Tribes with Flags. - Wikipedia

So I bow to his knowledge and ability. My low-ish rating of Americans in Paris has little to with him and a good deal to do with the subject. I was hoping for more detail on the Resistance fighting. We get only a light smattering: a mention of rooftop fighting or a young French man shooting a German soldier in the streets. But this is not that book. So take my rating with a grain of salt. This quite good book just wasn't the book for me.

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Medieval House-keeping

The Empty Throne by Bernard Cornwell
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Like books four and five in the GoT series, much of this book feels like housekeeping. Perhaps I should say, hallkeeping or castlecleaning.

I thought maybe in The Empty Throne our half-Dane, half-Saxon hero Uhtred of Bebbanburg might finally regain his lands and castle, but instead the story veers away from what it seemed to be leading up to and turned its focus on the bigger picture. That's annoying, but perhaps it's for the best. The get-my-castle-back storyline was getting stale. Besides, if he got the castle back, that would be the end. In the very least, it would take a lot of wind of out this series' sails.

Like any and all Bernard Cornwell novels, there's fighting and at least some skirmishes, but this one was low-key compared to others in the series. There's a lot of discussion. Hell, there's essentially what adds up to a court room drama at one point. The fighting that does take place feels inconsequential to the bigger picture.

The book starts with a narration by Uhtred's son, which is done to keep up the suspense created at the end of the last book. However, I think Cornwell might've had a two-fold reason. I believe he wanted to give the son a try-out in the lead role. After all, Uhtred's no spring chicken. If Cornwell wants to keep this series rolling, sooner or later he's going to need a replacement for his hero. I know I'm ready for a change.

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Doctor...Spy...Terrorist

The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole who Infiltrated the CIA by Joby Warrick
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Reading this was pretty much like watching Zero Dark Thirty. It's about the man who blew himself up in 2009 at the CIA base Camp Chapman at Khost in eastern Afghanistan.

Seven American CIA officers and contractors, an officer of Jordan's intelligence service, and an Afghan working for the CIA were killed when al-Balawi detonated a bomb sewn into a vest he was wearing. Six other American CIA officers were wounded. The bombing was the most lethal attack against the CIA in more than 25 years. - Wikipedia

"Al-Balawi" refers to Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi a doctor, who spent much of his free time using an alias to write fanatical diatribes for fundamentalist Islamic sites online. Jordanian agents got ahold of him, thought the converted him into a mole and sent him off to supposedly infiltrate al-Qaeda leadership. It appeared he had.

Appearances deceived.

Balawi went to al-Qaeda and they turned him into one of their most successful weapons. A video surfaced of Balawi with the radical Islamist group's number three man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. It appeared Balawi was treating the ailing Zawahiri. Balawi's intimate knowledge of these ailments, which were known in detail by the CIA and Jordanian agents, seemed to lend credibility to his claims of infiltration. Relating such details gave the pro-western forces hope that they had themselves a reliable mole.

Not all were convinced. But U.S. pressure for results rashly hastened as face-to-face meeting with their relatively new supposed double agent. And then the shit hit the fan.

The title, The Triple Agent, might be technically correct, but its validity is tenuous at best. I believe it's used to titillate and entice. When thinking of a "triple" agent, one imagines an intelligence officer of brilliant cunning and possessing the wherewithal to lie convincing while maintaining the appearance of cooperation. Balawi may have been smart, but it seems he had little need to display cunning. After he was sent off to join al-Qaeda as a double agent, the CIA/Jordanians had very little contact with him. It doesn't take a hardened veteran of spycraft to keep the sort of cover Balawi had to keep. He just didn't make himself available and said next to nothing until the CIA literally opened their gates and gave him free access without the usual checks and precautions.

The book mostly stays on topic, veering off only to give background to an event, idea or person in order to infuse the whole with a greater understanding. The Triple Agent is only as long as it ought to be and that's a big plus.

Don't let the 3 stars fool you. This was quite good, imo, and I really enjoyed it. Perhaps I'm unfairly docking it a star for its subject matter. I already knew the basics of the story, a story without much depth. Man hates western ideals, man blows self up and takes western agents with him. It's fascinating, emotional, and horrible and it's over quite quick.

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The Rise of ISIS

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

OH! ISIS! I thought they were saying Icees, as in...



Well, now that I'm up to speed on radical Islamic terrorism, who wants to invite me over to their bbq, so I can be the life of the party? Cuz nothing says FUN like bringing up politics and religion at a social gathering! Just look how enjoyable Facebook is these days.

All silliness aside, Black Flags is a solid way to understand how ISIS came to be. A good number of pages are also spent on Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, but the real focus is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the thug turned religious zealot and leader of a violent fundamentalist movement.

Joby Warrick gives the reader plenty of details on Zarqawi's past and what made him who he eventually became. It's not an in-depth character study that a psychologist could publish a paper on, but I certainly know the man much better now than I ever have.

But do I know the real story? I mean, what's Warrick's bias? He's certainly not kind to the Bush administration's handling of terrorism for most of this book and seems to side more with the CIA. And what does Warrick know? He worked for the Washington Post and as far as journalists go he seems to be the one most well-connected to what happened after 9/11. However, even the most well-connected journalist generally isn't going to have intel on the government's secrets and what went on behind the scenes.

As an average-joe-know-nothing, us readers will just have to be satisfied with what we can glean from folks like Warrick. That's not a terrible problem, because this was an enjoyable read and I'm looking forward to moving on to Warrick's next book The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole who Infiltrated the CIA.

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The Cost of Courage

The Cost of Courage by Charles Kaiser
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Well that was a big ol' disappointment. I was hoping for an engaging narrative of life as a French Resistance fighter during WWII and this fell far from the mark.

I wanted to hear about the hardships and underground tactics, the struggle of the people and their sacrifice. I got a little of that, but mostly I got a whole lot about a rich French family and how they didn't really want to talk about the war. Certainly this family suffered tragedy at the hands of the Nazi. Torture, incarceration and death was indeed the cost of their courage. But sadness and loss alone do not make much of a book. There's a reason obituaries are short.

Description of the family's struggle are minimal or occasionally inconsequential. Details of the war in general are used as lengthy filler. It feels like this book was stretching out what little story it possessed. One of the principle participants wrote a "dry" memoir of 45 pages on the topic of her and her family's involvement in the resistance. Charles Kaiser didn't think that was enough, but I think she got it right.

I listened to The Cost of Courage via audiobook and that was a bad choice. For some reason, the author decided to read this himself and he is a terrible reader, one of the worst I've encountered on a professional production.

Much of the book is written in present tense. I guess that was Kaiser's attempt to make the history more exciting, to make it feel more immediate, in hopes of turning passive prose into something actively impactful. It didn't. Honestly, listening to him it sounded more like he was reading the scenes and actions from a movie script:

"Jack and Jill go up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack falls down and breaks his crown. Jill comes tumbling after."

What made it worse was Kaiser's habit of trailing off at the end of each sentence. Imagine reading the Three Little Pigs like this:

"AND THEN THE BIG BAD WOLF HUFFED!!! AND PUFFED!!! and blew the house down."

*whooosh!* goes the wind right out of the damn sails.


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Beautiful Pictures of Horrible Things

Gandhara: The Memory of Afghanistan by Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Who destroys 1400 year old gargantuan statues? The Taliban, that's who. See, this is why we can't have nice things.

The Bamiyan Buddhas, carved from the stone cliffside in the Bamiyan Valley of eastern Afghanistan, stood for fourteen centuries until a rival organized religion came along and decided it was too much of a threat. They couldn't build up their own impressive monuments. Nope, they had to dynamite someone else's, least their own grasp upon the people be impinged.



Seriously, that is such weak-sauce.

Gandhara tries to salvage something of the remains. It gives a brief, and not altogether succinct, summary of the history, surmising upon the origins of this land where Greek art met Indian Hinduism. Author Berenice Geoffroy-Schnieiter, a French archeologist and art historian, is suited to talk about the French archeologists given permission to work in the area and unearth the ruins. Perhaps something was lost in the translation or perhaps the author isn't a gifted writer (that's no knock on Berenice, I mean, how many skills can one person excel at?!) as not all of this was described in an English easily digested. Or maybe I'm ignorant of the culture and art of that part of the world. Actually, yeah, that's more likely.

On the other hand, this slim volume is two-thirds photos. There isn't a lot of room for elucidation in an 80 page book when 60 of those pages are pictures. However, the photos are gorgeous and there are summary explanations at the back giving the pertinent details of each.






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This Is No Three Hour Tour

The Raft by Robert Trumbull
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three naval airmen from a downed plane spend over a month in an open raft upon the South Pacific Seas with no food, water or cover from the sun and live to tell the tale. Wow. I need to stop bitching when I get a little sunburn or miss lunch.

This memoir was put together by Robert Trumbull in 1942 soon after Harold Dixon, Gene Aldrich, and Tony Pastula underwent their trying ordeal. It's told from Dixon's perspective. He was the pilot and senior to the other two. He gives his opinions relatively freely. His descriptions of their journey are novel-worthy, making for one heck of a nail-biting read.

Some of the details, like what they were doing and where it took place, had to be left sketchy because the war was still ongoing. But that doesn't detract from the essence of their story. I've read a few sea survival biographies and this ranks right up there with its storms, sharks, deprivation, hope and despair. Heck, this even includes an encounter with natives, like it was some kind of fanciful 18th century adventure tall tale. At times I felt like I was reading of Captain Bligh's post-mutiny survival voyage or a better version of Robinson Crusoe.

If reading The Raft doesn't sound like your thing, perhaps you might watch it? It was recently made into a movie, Against the Sun, starring Malfoy...



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Over The Wild Blue Yonder

The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45 by Stephen E. Ambrose
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Slow down with that zipping and zooming about, whipper-snapper! This is a far tamer tale. Like the planes Stephen E. Ambrose is describing herein, his prose plods along at a steady, satisfying pace. These are not jet fighters, these are workhorses carrying out a task.

The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45 is just as much the story of George McGovern as it is of the pilots and crews of those famous World War II bombers. McGovern is most famously known as the Democratic candidate who lost to Nixon in the 1972 election, the year the Democratic National Headquarters was raided by Republican operatives in the dead of night during a little incident you may have heard of called Watergate. Prior to that, he piloted one of these finicky, taxing aerial beasts.



Ambrose wisely uses McGovern's wartime experience as a template and as the narrative thread for his treatise on the B-24, infusing a dull, non-fiction text with a human element, a technique in vogue with popular, modern day historians. The people like a good story. McGovern's life is perfectly entertaining in this context, but Ambrose heightens his book's readability by adding in the stories of other pilots and those of McGovern's flight crew. All of which turns a book about a plane into something much more humanistic. The reader can't help but develop an attachment to these courageous men.

The Wild Blue is a solid niche book for those familiar with WWII, but who want to have a deeper understanding of this specific facet of the war.

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A Pleasure To Read Of Vietnam Horrors

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was in the shit. Karl Marlantes put me there.

Matterhorn is a deep and penetrating look within the Vietnam War. It's the sort of horribly realistic novel that can only be reproduced by the survivor of an atrocity.

Highly decorated Vietnam War veteran Karl Marlantes had been at work on this book since the war ended. If you ever need an example of an artistic project into which the artist has poured his blood, sweat and tears, you can point to Matterhorn.

The book follows 2nd Lieutenant Mellas, a squeaky clean Ivy League kid who signs up and intentionally gets himself stuck in with the grunts, the high school flunkies who make up the front line fodder. Mellas wants to be one of the boys. He also secretly longs for medals and promotion. His desires and inexperience could get him killed. It could get a lot of boys killed and the boys don't like that.

Matterhorn is not all doom and gloom from beginning to end. I doubt I would've finished it if it were. No, Marlantes does an excellent job in building the tension. He starts things off light. There is levity through out in its proper place. Then the trouble is escalated. The tension is tightened. You feel the frustration, elation, despair...hope.

I hesitated to read this. After all, wasn't it enough that I'd seen Platoon and Full Metal Jacket? Vietnam is a sad chapter in history. Did I really want to revisit it? However, word on the street was persistent: this is great, don't miss this. I'm glad I didn't give it a miss. And neither should you.

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A Place More Real Than Home

The Lotus Eaters
by Tatjana Soli
Published by St. Martin's Press

Reviewed by Amanda
4 Out of 5 Stars

Initially set against the fall of Saigon and then flashing back to the early 1960's, Tatjana Soli's The Lotus Eaters evokes the hypnotic horrors of war set against a lush, culturally rich landscape that lured many photojournalists during the Vietnam War. Falling victim to the intoxicating mix of adrenaline, fear, curiosity, and self-righteousness, they--just as the lotus eaters of Homer's The Odyssey--forsake their homelands as war becomes their passion and their comfort.

The novel focuses on Helen Adams, a naive, uninitiated field photographer whose desire to connect with the military life of her father and her brother leads her to Saigon. A born tomboy, Helen has always resented being shut out of the masculine pursuits she longed to be a part of and quickly finds her experience in Vietnam is to be no exception. As a woman in war, she's viewed as a curiosity, a sexual object, a harbinger of bad luck, an inconvenience. However, her tenacity and her willingness to stoically endure the soldiers' hardships begins to earn her a grudging respect. It also helps that she's willing to understand and experience Vietnam in a way other Americans aren't--to look beyond the headlines and the government shading of events; to know its people and its culture: "That was the experience in Vietnam: things in plain view, their meaning visible only to the initiated" (7).

Soli's characterization of Helen is presented as a woman who is constantly evolving, growing as she tests herself in the ultimate masculine sphere and as she confronts her own hypocrisies in pursuing one iconic image that will capture all the horror, all the waste, and all the courage of war. Helen knows the power of photographs to change the hearts and minds that really matter, those of the Americans back home, and, as such, "Pictures could not be accessories to the story--evidence--they had to contain the story within the frame; the best picture contained a whole war within one frame" (118). At the same time, she knows her craving for such a photograph is that of an addict's and will never be sated; as soon as she has a photograph that seems to define everything she wants to communicate, she knows she'll take increasingly dangerous risks as she tries to top previous successes.

The novel also presents the stories of two men who will help define Helen's life in Vietnam: Sam Darrow, a veteran war photographer whose only home is in conflict, and his aide, Linh, a photographer and translator who has belonged to and been damaged by both Vietnamese armies. Through these two men, Helen learns the toll war takes on those tasked with documenting its reality. While not equal to the burden of the young men in battle, the weight of being the one behind the lens, bearing witness to atrocity after atrocity, comes with its own spiritual price.

As lovely as the cover is, it's also deceiving. It's clearly marketed to a female historical fiction audience, so I feared it would be a torrid love story set against a Vietnam that was as authentic as a 1940's sound stage, with maybe a water buffalo roaming through for a dash of "authenticity." While there is a realistic romantic element involved, the real love story is between the photographers and the war. Soli has done her research and the Vietnam in her novel is fully realized: its beauty, its filth, its people, its cities, and its jungles. Her war scenes are harrowing, brutal and realistic, and seeing them through the eyes of a female photojournalist is a uniquely satisfying point of view for a war novel.