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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
Summary: Gretchen Muller isd Adolf Hitler's fet and family friend. She trusts him with her life and future. But when she needs Uncle Dolf the most, he pushes her away in embarrassment. Soon, Gretchen finds the deadly and dark side of the National Socialist party. When Gretchen digs deeper for the truth of her father's heroic death for Uncle Dolf, she meets confident and fearless Jewish reporter, Daniel Cohen. When she starts falling for him, everything falls from her once too perfect life.
My Rating: 5 stars
This is the first historical fiction book I have truly loved and cherished. It's the first historical fiction that hasn't taken a week to finish or drop.
And when a reader reads something not from her/his usual genres (for me it's sci-fi, contemporary, fantasy, dystopian, or paranormal), and loves it, the novel deserves to be praised.
Prisoner of Night and Fog is truly a historical fiction masterpiece. Ms. Blankman creates a fleshed-out Munich in the 1930s. You get a well-described and deep personality of everyone - something that is very hard for historical fiction to accomplish. Yet Ms. Blankman pulls it off with a spectacular plot and a wonderful, daring love interest.
[b:Prisoner of Night and Fog|17668473|Prisoner of Night and Fog (Prisoner of Night and Fog, #1)|Anne Blankman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1395470671s/17668473.jpg|24664532] is what happens when you get a great author, delicately-crafted history, Hitler, and the cliche forbidden love interest in a book.
A tremendous novel.
My Rating: 5 stars
This is the first historical fiction book I have truly loved and cherished. It's the first historical fiction that hasn't taken a week to finish or drop.
And when a reader reads something not from her/his usual genres (for me it's sci-fi, contemporary, fantasy, dystopian, or paranormal), and loves it, the novel deserves to be praised.
Prisoner of Night and Fog is truly a historical fiction masterpiece. Ms. Blankman creates a fleshed-out Munich in the 1930s. You get a well-described and deep personality of everyone - something that is very hard for historical fiction to accomplish. Yet Ms. Blankman pulls it off with a spectacular plot and a wonderful, daring love interest.
[b:Prisoner of Night and Fog|17668473|Prisoner of Night and Fog (Prisoner of Night and Fog, #1)|Anne Blankman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1395470671s/17668473.jpg|24664532] is what happens when you get a great author, delicately-crafted history, Hitler, and the cliche forbidden love interest in a book.
A tremendous novel.
I do like stories in this time setting. However, this one just doesn't interest me.
I really enjoyed reading this book. At first it was hard to get used to Hitler as a character. It just felt a bit strange. The beginning of this book was a lot of build up and exposition, and it really took a while for it to pick up. But the last 150 pages or so we're very fast paced. At some points I felt like we were jumping around a bit too much from scene to scene. Also, I liked Gretchen and Daniel together, but I kind of felt their relationship was a bit rushed. They did kind of take their time but once it was known that they were both falling for each other the relationship just went a touch too fast for me, but I do still like them as a couple. All in all a good read, I would recommend it!
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
I'm not quite sure where I fall on Prisoner of Night and Fog. The history, which was real (and, as far as I can tell, well researched) was interesting. The mystery, which was fictional, was a little bit weak (I knew who did it from the very beginning).
I don't know all that much about WWII--other than what's taught in a typical higher level high school history class and what you can learn from reading Hitler's Wikipedia page--but I think it's a really interesting topic. Like all wars, the reasons for it's happening are extremely complex and its seeds were scattered for decades before the war broke out. WWII is not as simple as people would like to believe; I think PoNaF gets that. Hitler is not as simple as people would like to believe; I know PoNaF gets that.
This book centers on a fictional girl named Gretchen Müller who was fit in between real players in 1930's Germany such as Eva Braun, Geli Raubal, Ernst Röhm, and Adolf Hitler. Yes, that's right, Hitler is a character in this book. That's so important. People would like to believe that Hitler was some kind of evil force, some kind of diabolical being, some kind of other, because it makes them feel better to believe a human couldn't do the things Hitler did. But the fact of the matter is, Hitler was a person. This book is important because it shows that. It shows people's fear (although it could have done a better job), it shows the way people band together and rally against a perceived enemy without questioning why that person/those people would be their enemy. I love historical fiction because it keeps us from forgetting the things we'd rather forget. That's what this book has going for it.
What it doesn't have going for it is the mystery. It focuses on Gretchen because she's trying to find out what really killed her father. She's been told all her life that he was a martyr who threw himself in front of Hitler, but she's now being presented with evidence that that may not actually have been what happened. Gretchen is Hitler's darling, but she's finding herself opposing his views and trying to escape the grasp of the Nazis because of the truth about her father.
Obviously it was important, for the value of the book (which is showing that Hitler was a real person) that Gretchen be close to Hitler. And obviously it was important for Gretchen to find a reason to not believe his message and to begin to oppose his views (she needed to be sympathetic which meant she absolutely could not be anti-semitic and she was only allowed to have a limited amount of fear of Jewish people). However, I think that reason needed some work to be totally believable. I understand that it's hard to weave a made up mystery into real historical events, you don't want to create something that overshadows what really happened, but the mystery was weak. It was obvious to me from the very beginning who killed Gretchen's dad. I couldn't believe she didn't figure it out until the end of the book. And it was enough to make her weary of Hitler and the rest of the Nazis, but I didn't think it was enough to make her trust Daniel (the reporter who was the catalyst for her search for the truth and also her love interest) as much as she did. Their relationship wasn't insta-love, but it didn't feel completely genuine either.
So I'm not sure what to think. PoNaF is a work of historical fiction. Is the history the important part, or the fiction? I factor them both into the rating, which is why (despite my satisfaction with the historical part) I'm afraid I can't give the book more than three stars. I am looking forward to reading it's sequel, though. I hope Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke delivers just as well in the history department while upping the ante in the fiction department. That tends to happen between an author's debut and their subsequent books.
I don't know all that much about WWII--other than what's taught in a typical higher level high school history class and what you can learn from reading Hitler's Wikipedia page--but I think it's a really interesting topic. Like all wars, the reasons for it's happening are extremely complex and its seeds were scattered for decades before the war broke out. WWII is not as simple as people would like to believe; I think PoNaF gets that. Hitler is not as simple as people would like to believe; I know PoNaF gets that.
This book centers on a fictional girl named Gretchen Müller who was fit in between real players in 1930's Germany such as Eva Braun, Geli Raubal, Ernst Röhm, and Adolf Hitler. Yes, that's right, Hitler is a character in this book. That's so important. People would like to believe that Hitler was some kind of evil force, some kind of diabolical being, some kind of other, because it makes them feel better to believe a human couldn't do the things Hitler did. But the fact of the matter is, Hitler was a person. This book is important because it shows that. It shows people's fear (although it could have done a better job), it shows the way people band together and rally against a perceived enemy without questioning why that person/those people would be their enemy. I love historical fiction because it keeps us from forgetting the things we'd rather forget. That's what this book has going for it.
What it doesn't have going for it is the mystery. It focuses on Gretchen because she's trying to find out what really killed her father. She's been told all her life that he was a martyr who threw himself in front of Hitler, but she's now being presented with evidence that that may not actually have been what happened. Gretchen is Hitler's darling, but she's finding herself opposing his views and trying to escape the grasp of the Nazis because of the truth about her father.
Obviously it was important, for the value of the book (which is showing that Hitler was a real person) that Gretchen be close to Hitler. And obviously it was important for Gretchen to find a reason to not believe his message and to begin to oppose his views (she needed to be sympathetic which meant she absolutely could not be anti-semitic and she was only allowed to have a limited amount of fear of Jewish people). However, I think that reason needed some work to be totally believable. I understand that it's hard to weave a made up mystery into real historical events, you don't want to create something that overshadows what really happened, but the mystery was weak. It was obvious to me from the very beginning who killed Gretchen's dad. I couldn't believe she didn't figure it out until the end of the book. And it was enough to make her weary of Hitler and the rest of the Nazis, but I didn't think it was enough to make her trust Daniel (the reporter who was the catalyst for her search for the truth and also her love interest) as much as she did. Their relationship wasn't insta-love, but it didn't feel completely genuine either.
So I'm not sure what to think. PoNaF is a work of historical fiction. Is the history the important part, or the fiction? I factor them both into the rating, which is why (despite my satisfaction with the historical part) I'm afraid I can't give the book more than three stars. I am looking forward to reading it's sequel, though. I hope Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke delivers just as well in the history department while upping the ante in the fiction department. That tends to happen between an author's debut and their subsequent books.
I have not had the feeling while reading where page numbers don't seem to matter in a long time, but this book managed to fully enrapture me that I hardly found myself glancing down to see how far I was. I was totally captured by the story and it moved so quickly. I truly didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did, but so I'm glad I finally picked it up!
Had a lot of action and kept me reading. For someone who doesn't love historical fiction I thought it was good.
