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4.23 AVERAGE
4.23 AVERAGE
Two young boys looking for chicken eggs during WW2? This book sounds horrible. I was wrong! I regret not reading this book sooner, is engaging and keeps you on the edge of your seat from cover to cover. Highly recommended.
Leningrad is under seige by the Naizs and conditions are horrendous. A teenager and a Red Army deserter are arrested. To escape death they accept an odd task: find a dozen eggs for the Colonel's daughter's wedding. Lev and Kolya set off, narrowly escape a cannibal couple and fall in with partisans who aim to execute a vicious German officer. At times the novel reminded me of Catch 22, and then it would veer in dangerous directions illustrating the treatment of civilians. Its a nicely paced book with memorable characters.
I did really enjoy this book. The one thing that I think the author could have left out however, were the many details about sex. I was hoping to teach this to my high school students, but it would take a lot for this book to get approved as part of the curriculum. I felt that at times the author chose this writing style for the reaction that he would receive from his readers. I understand that one of the main protagonists was a teenage boy, but I truly think that it was unnecessary to include so many intimate details. Other than that, the book was a decent read, and enlightened me with a different take on World War II. The Russian perspective was something that readers of Holocaust materials should definitely consider finding more information about.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
City of Thieves recounts Lev Beniov's experience of the siege of Leningrad. The 17-year-old protagonist is caught outside his residence building after curfew and is labelled a looter. For this crime, as for many others in the wartime city, the usual punishment is death.
Lev is thrown into prison for the night where he meets Kolya, an arrogant, educated, and smooth-talking deserter who becomes his friend over the following days. Though the two expect to be executed, they are spared by a senior NKVD officer who takes their ration cards in exchange for a curfew pass, a few days of liberty, and a dangerous mission.
The two scramble to find what the officer wants before their deadline, leading them into the company of black marketeers, cannibals, partisans, and officers of the Einsatzgruppen.
The novel begins many years in the future, in America, where Lev's grandson asks him about his wartime experiences. So the reader knows the story must end well for the main character, still, the story is gripping as the brutalities of the winter city and wartime Soviet Union are unveiled.
Concentrating on only a few pivotal characters Benioff makes each one of them memorable. He describes dark scenes, truly dark, things that could only happen in wartime, but there is humor and levity as well. And the book is short, it isn't a huge commitment of time or effort.
I kept coming back to the audiobook it was so good, even when I had other things to do. Maybe because there are so few characters, City of Thieves makes an excellent audiobook.
For fiction enthusiasts, I highly recommend this book. I'm a tough audience, but I give it five stars out of five. It's probably the only book I'll rate so highly this year.
There are quite a few adult scenes, bad language, and violence so if you're easily triggered, (t)read cautiously.
Lev is thrown into prison for the night where he meets Kolya, an arrogant, educated, and smooth-talking deserter who becomes his friend over the following days. Though the two expect to be executed, they are spared by a senior NKVD officer who takes their ration cards in exchange for a curfew pass, a few days of liberty, and a dangerous mission.
The two scramble to find what the officer wants before their deadline, leading them into the company of black marketeers, cannibals, partisans, and officers of the Einsatzgruppen.
The novel begins many years in the future, in America, where Lev's grandson asks him about his wartime experiences. So the reader knows the story must end well for the main character, still, the story is gripping as the brutalities of the winter city and wartime Soviet Union are unveiled.
Concentrating on only a few pivotal characters Benioff makes each one of them memorable. He describes dark scenes, truly dark, things that could only happen in wartime, but there is humor and levity as well. And the book is short, it isn't a huge commitment of time or effort.
I kept coming back to the audiobook it was so good, even when I had other things to do. Maybe because there are so few characters, City of Thieves makes an excellent audiobook.
For fiction enthusiasts, I highly recommend this book. I'm a tough audience, but I give it five stars out of five. It's probably the only book I'll rate so highly this year.
There are quite a few adult scenes, bad language, and violence so if you're easily triggered, (t)read cautiously.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book is a gem. I mowed through it in a couple of days. David Benioff's City of Thieves is the best kind of historical fiction - well researched, deftly written, and, at its heart, are characters whose humanity allows the reader to connect to another time and place that was once real.
Lev, a 17-year-old doing what he can to help defend his home city of Leningrad during the German siege in 1942, and Kolya, a wise-cracking, literature-loving, soldier, are picked up by the Russian police for, respectively, looting and deserting. They are then set to the unusual and nearly impossible task of finding a dozen eggs for the wedding cake of a powerful colonel's daughter. Their journey treks them across war-torn Leningard and out into its occupied countryside. The action moves quickly and I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.
This book swings quickly and often between humor and tragedy. And it is this that gives the story its real appeal. Even while atrocities are going on - cannibalism, rape, torture, and death - people are still people. They feel affection, jealousy, lust, shame, empathy ALONG with feeling afraid, hungry, cold, exhausted. Boys think about girls. They wonder how cowardly or heroic they might look. They worry about rejection and whether or not they will ever grown up. This story isn't just about the horrors of war. Its shows how people retain their humanity in the face of these horrors. And its damn good.
Lev, a 17-year-old doing what he can to help defend his home city of Leningrad during the German siege in 1942, and Kolya, a wise-cracking, literature-loving, soldier, are picked up by the Russian police for, respectively, looting and deserting. They are then set to the unusual and nearly impossible task of finding a dozen eggs for the wedding cake of a powerful colonel's daughter. Their journey treks them across war-torn Leningard and out into its occupied countryside. The action moves quickly and I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.
This book swings quickly and often between humor and tragedy. And it is this that gives the story its real appeal. Even while atrocities are going on - cannibalism, rape, torture, and death - people are still people. They feel affection, jealousy, lust, shame, empathy ALONG with feeling afraid, hungry, cold, exhausted. Boys think about girls. They wonder how cowardly or heroic they might look. They worry about rejection and whether or not they will ever grown up. This story isn't just about the horrors of war. Its shows how people retain their humanity in the face of these horrors. And its damn good.