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4.13 AVERAGE
4.13 AVERAGE
Whew...I don't have schema with pilots or airplanes...the first 180 pages were challenging, I breezed through to the end because I read the reviews of other readers of this book who loved it, but sadly I must admit that I did not.
"Code Name Verity" is indeed a mind game of a novel, one that keeps the reader guessing and engrossed to the very end. Brilliantly plotted, full of vivid characters, and deeply compelling, this is a story of bravery & fear, of courage & compassion, and ultimately of the triumphant beauty of self-sacrificing friendship.
A great read. It surprised me in all the amazing ways and made me really feel the frienship between the two friends the story's all about. I sobbed, I wept for their fate and the cruelty of war. I'd recommend for everyone with a heart and just a little bit of love for war themed literature. It also didn't really feel like young adult, probably because it was more 'adult' than 'young' or because there's nothing young or careless in war. Anyway, go read it, everyone!
Finished the book and immediately started it over again. Couple uses of strong language.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I have two weeks. You'll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.
That's what you do to enemy agents. It's what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine - and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden interrogating me again.
He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I'm going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France - an Allied Invasion of Two.
We are a sensational team.
It's been a really long time since I sobbed this much while reading a book, and or finished one this freaking quickly -- I ploughed through all 333 pages over the course of two days. For the first time in years, it reminded me of being a kid again & just bulldozing my way through a novel.
So, you know, that speaks a lot to how engaging and addictive this one is. It's like PS Longer Letter Later meets The Usual Suspects meets Nazi interrogation and torture! I'm surprised that it's for 14-year-olds, but then again, I've sorta lost touch with YA and how mature it can be -- it's very disturbing material, but it's still written with wit and humour. I was astonished that I was laughing out loud at Verity's small fierce shows of inadvertently hilarious resistance, before having my heart broken when her surge of willpower would fail and, well, terrible repercussions would occur. The torture is visceral and matter-of-fact, but isn't gratuitous or written for shock value or as torture porn.
Wein's grasp on voice is so clear and strong, and the novel plays with identity and unreliable narration. Also, epistolary novels are my jam.
With its two main female characters, one a WWII pilot and the other a spy, Code Name Verity is a celebration of friendship and of strong female characters who don't have to tote guns or sacrifice their femininity or emotions in order to be powerful. There isn't any romantic plot or male character to get between them, either -- they just are.
"It's like being in love, discovering your best friend." Truer words never spoken. UGH, MY HEART.
Verity is a Scheherazade figure, telling stories to save her life, but the comparison isn't bashed into your skull -- someone doesn't make the reference until halfway through the book or so, which was a great exercise in self-restraint on the writer's part, IMO.
The book is filled with gritty, horrifying details and does an excellent job at putting you into the narrator's psychological strain, to the point where simple words -- "kerosene", " "wireless set" -- make me sort of want to flinch. Von Linden is AMAZING as a villain: aloof, clever, terrifying, and most importantly, humanised but without losing his bone-chilling menace. Ughhhh I loved him. And I have to admit that v.L and Verity's dynamic -- which was electric -- hits my fondness for Stockholm Syndrome, but even I can admit that it wouldn't work and is a terrible and a no-good idea, okay? It's just that I adored their interactions together, which were riveting and traumatising all at once.
Even the minor characters are richly, vividly painted.
There are some absolutely amazing twists (I caught one of them pretty early on, which made me puff up with pride), and also gut-wrenching ones which made me burst into tears on the subway. DO NOT READ TOO MANY REVIEWS in case other people spoil various plot twists that I haven't mentioned. Just go and get this book and read it.
And as per usual, one of my favourite quotes enclosed under spoiler tags:
Spoiler
That week of interrogation--after they'd starved me in the dark for most of a month, when they finally settled down to the more intricate task of picking information out of me--von Linden did not look at me once. He paced, I remember, but it was as though he were doing a very complicated sum in his head. There were a number of gloved assistants on hand to deal with the mess. He never seemed to tell them what to do; I suppose he must have nodded or pointed. It was like being turned into a technical project. The horror and humiliation weren't in that you were stripped to your underthings and being slowly taken to pieces, but in that nobody seemed to give a damn. They were not doing it for fun; they were not in it for lust or pleasure or revenge; they were not bullying me, the way Engel does; they were not angry with me. Von Linden's young soldiers were doing their job, as indifferently and accurately as if they were taking apart a wireless set, with von Linden doing his job as their chief engineer, dispassionately directing and testing and cutting off the power supply.
Only, your wireless set does not shiver and weep and curse and beg for water and be sick and wipe its nose in its hair as its wires are short-circuited and cut and fried and knotted back together. It just sits there stoically being a wireless set. It doesn't mind if you leave it tied to a chair for three days sitting in its own effluvium with an iron rail strapped upright against its spine so it can't lean back.
Ugh. Like a punch to the gut.
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
emotional
informative
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated