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4.23 AVERAGE
4.23 AVERAGE
Amazing Book
I cannot believe how much I loved this book. I thought that WWII was a bit overused these days but this is truly not a book about the war it is a story of a journey. One might call it a classic quest story.
But I truly felt involved with these characters. I really felt for them and their journey. I am not sure if this is a true story or all fiction. Either way I thought it was so well crafted.
I literally was emotional all by the end.
The boom has everything, Nazis, cannibals, chickens, etc. I think this book should go down as a classic
I cannot believe how much I loved this book. I thought that WWII was a bit overused these days but this is truly not a book about the war it is a story of a journey. One might call it a classic quest story.
But I truly felt involved with these characters. I really felt for them and their journey. I am not sure if this is a true story or all fiction. Either way I thought it was so well crafted.
I literally was emotional all by the end.
The boom has everything, Nazis, cannibals, chickens, etc. I think this book should go down as a classic
This was not one of my favorite stories, a bit far fetched, IMO, but I have to give it extra credit for being well written. It's a quick read.
dark
funny
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I read this because Ive been on a The Last of Us kick, and it was mentioned during one of the documentaries on its development. I can see very clearly this novels influence on one of my favorite stories. Very interesting. I think Id like to annotate it one day and do a side by side comparison of the two for funsies. I think it would be really cool to compare the different media formats and how consumption of the material in their two seperate forms changed its impact. It feels like an appropriatly nerdy way to show my appreciation =)
Found family stories are my favorite. This one is about two russians, one boy and one soldier, sent to find eggs for a commander during winter in WWII (when its difficult enough to find bookpaste to chew on for protein). Im kind of sad I devoured this book so quickly. I'll have to reread it during my next tlou obsession spell.
7/10
Found family stories are my favorite. This one is about two russians, one boy and one soldier, sent to find eggs for a commander during winter in WWII (when its difficult enough to find bookpaste to chew on for protein). Im kind of sad I devoured this book so quickly. I'll have to reread it during my next tlou obsession spell.
7/10
Apparently I'm in the minority, not loving this book. It was a pretty straightforward quest story wrapped in the setting of WWII Russia, in which two young men must track down a dozen eggs in a starving city for a colonel's daughter's wedding cake or else be executed for looting and deserting respectively. I found it fairly predictable — by about chapter 10 I guessed that Kolya would die by the end , and near the end I guessed that the colonel would already have eggs by the time they got there . The characters' banter was entertaining and even laugh-out-loud funny at parts, and even though you know Lev survives (because the book is framed as an interview with him as an old man) it's never clear exactly how they're going to get out of the various scrapes they find themselves in.
What frustrated me most about this book was the same thing as another war novel, A Soldier of the Great War. There are few female characters, and every time Lev encounters one, he immediately starts thinking about her naked and imagining various parts of her body or talking about how he'd like to kiss her or have sex with her. Much of Lev and Kolya's conversation is consumed by the same topic. On one level, sure, it's normal for young men to talk about sex and tease one another, but on the other hand, it reduces all the women to objects, even the one who's a stereotypical tomboy — which I think was intended to be progressive? Like, look, here's a character who's not your typical feminine woman and the narrator still wants to sleep with her. Excuse if I'm not impressed by the multiple "but does she even have breasts" conversations. And Kolya can't shut up about how obsessed he is with the colonel's daughter, who he's never even met, he just saw out the window for five minutes. The book would have been vastly improved for me if three-quarters of the discussion of women's bodies had been cut.
Don't get me wrong — on the whole, the writing was great. Benioff is able to make the reader feel viscerally what it's like to be freezing and starving in Leningrad and fearful for your life when even your own countrymen have orders to execute civilians for any number of reasons. It's a quick, plot-driven novel where the ending is satisfying even though it's predictable. I definitely understand why this was recognized as a book written for adults that's also popular with young adults; I would imagine the violence, coarse language, and heavy sexual content would make it a hard sell to be marketed directly to teens but would instead be one they'd love to find on their own. The main character is 17 and feels awkward and self-conscious like many teens; it just happens to be in the middle of a war where he could die at any moment.
If you are not as bothered as I am by the constant dissecting of women's bodies by young male characters, then most likely you would enjoy this book as most readers seem to. For me, it was fine, but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it.
What frustrated me most about this book was the same thing as another war novel, A Soldier of the Great War. There are few female characters, and every time Lev encounters one, he immediately starts thinking about her naked and imagining various parts of her body or talking about how he'd like to kiss her or have sex with her. Much of Lev and Kolya's conversation is consumed by the same topic. On one level, sure, it's normal for young men to talk about sex and tease one another, but on the other hand, it reduces all the women to objects, even the one who's a stereotypical tomboy — which I think was intended to be progressive? Like, look, here's a character who's not your typical feminine woman and the narrator still wants to sleep with her. Excuse if I'm not impressed by the multiple "but does she even have breasts" conversations. And Kolya can't shut up about how obsessed he is with the colonel's daughter, who he's never even met, he just saw out the window for five minutes. The book would have been vastly improved for me if three-quarters of the discussion of women's bodies had been cut.
Don't get me wrong — on the whole, the writing was great. Benioff is able to make the reader feel viscerally what it's like to be freezing and starving in Leningrad and fearful for your life when even your own countrymen have orders to execute civilians for any number of reasons. It's a quick, plot-driven novel where the ending is satisfying even though it's predictable. I definitely understand why this was recognized as a book written for adults that's also popular with young adults; I would imagine the violence, coarse language, and heavy sexual content would make it a hard sell to be marketed directly to teens but would instead be one they'd love to find on their own. The main character is 17 and feels awkward and self-conscious like many teens; it just happens to be in the middle of a war where he could die at any moment.
If you are not as bothered as I am by the constant dissecting of women's bodies by young male characters, then most likely you would enjoy this book as most readers seem to. For me, it was fine, but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it.
Slow start, but took off....couldn't put it down. Excellent !!
Pretty intense book. So casual and readable, but unflinching in portraying the brutality of humans during wartime.
Wow. I don’t say this about many books...but, would read again.
Excellent book. Great storytelling and perfect pacing.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No