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raegancihammers 's review for:
City of Thieves
by David Benioff
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.