Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "war"
The Alphabet House Review
Kuća abecede by Jussi Adler-OlsenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Experiments on humans are not a novelty in our humanity-deprived society, but in a psychological thriller The Alphabet House by Jussi Adler-Olsen set in a WW2 Nazi Germany and post-Nazi Europe, to be more precise England and Germany, are as shocking as the war itself and destruction it had left in lives and minds of those who survived it.
The world of two RAF pilots and good friends James and Bryan crashes down with the crash of their plane during a special photo-reconnaissance mission near Dresden. In hope of survival and running from the pursuit of enemy soldiers, they jump aboard a train which was supposed to be their way out to freedom. What they didn't know was that the train had been full of senior SS soldiers wounded on the eastern front and that instead to freedom it would take them deeper into Germany, behind the enemy lines, into the mental hospital the Alphabet House.
In a novel about war and an attempt of life during and after it, which according to its author is not a war novel, human relationships are put on the most challenging trial. Will friendship endure insanity, daily shock treatments, experimental drugs and the madness of one time, will it past the test of the basic instinct for survival which has lead to escape of one of the friends from the torments and captivity in a hellhole and ultimately to betrayal of another?
The Alphabet House is full of razor-sharp twists and turns, situations which border with surreal and almost impossible, acts of brutality and violence that will freeze blood in the veins of the reader. It is a collision and a symbiosis of the world of sanity and madness, where the unthinkable from our present perspective becomes natural in the blurred sight of a tortured mind.
Besides fascinatingly dissecting the behavior of the human mind, Jussi Adler-Olsen in The Alphabet House raises some serious questions about human relationships, how far we can go before we irrevocably damage them and whether a sincere repentance and goodwill are enough to forgive and maybe even forget.
In the particular case of James and Bryan, the real question is can friendship survive the act of Bryan's betrayal and thirty years of James' drugged and lost life? Can Bryan's wealth and money restore their relationship to the days and voices that were resonating from the past, when they were still kids? Or is the gap simply too big, the mind too damaged and the will too broken, just like the white crests of waves crashed by untamable and unforgiving forces of nature under the cliffs of Dover.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
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The Alphabet House
Jussi Adler-Olsen
Bernard Jan
The Thousand Years War Series Review
If you are a fan of high-packed action novels, and the rivers of gore and piles of dead, burned or evaporated bodies are your kind of thing, then you are at the right place! Welcome to The Thousand Years War Series by Angel Ramon Medina!
If we still don't believe we are not alone in the universe, it is the moment to reconsider our beliefs and everything they taught us as kids. Earth is under attack and our future and the future of our world rests on the shoulders of a few—a tiny group of four people—who put themselves on the frontiers of the new global war to save mankind.
Angel, Maria, Dayvon and Luis, popularly called our heroes in the three-book series, knew little about each other when the great evil decided to take over Earth for itself. They didn't have time to get familiar and overcome their differences when they bravely joined forces and stood against the new hostile, ruthless and violent alien race called gloobas, who already fought the similar war a thousand years ago. To save our world, they used a new virtual reality weapon, for whatever happens in this virtual world also happens on Earth.
In The Thousand Years War Trilogy casualties are many on both sides though the dead gloobas outnumber a lot dead humans and members of other alien races. Fight for survival is going on in all corners of known and unknown worlds: Brooklyn, Hollywood, the Arctic Core, the Solar System, black holes, outer space. Action scenes line up one after another like in a furious action motion picture, especially in The Thousand Years War and Revenge of the Gloobas: The Third Book of the Thousand Years War, while Framed: The Second Book of the Thousand Years War gives us the brief moment of deceptive break when we get to feel the taste of a normal life of our heroes. In this central—and the shortest— part of the series, Angel, a victim of dirty politics and human enemies, has to justify his good name and his family's good name before he can take matters back into his own hands and sets himself into the ultimate and final showdown with the gloobas.
Even though all three books need additional polishing and editing and the author's writing skills a little fine-tuning (Revenge of the Gloobas much less than The Thousand Years War and Framed), this Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican young writer gave us an amazing sci-fi adventure saga. On 1,030 pages (brace yourself for a long reading!) Angel Ramon Medina gave us evidence of his very vivid imagination and enormous capacity to write much and to write fast!
It should not be left unnoticed that in only seven months Medina wrote, designed, self-published and marketed three of his novels and Angel's Nightmare Adventures short story, which is a 2016 precedent! So whether we like alien-related stories or not, we must give Angel Ramon Medina credit for rocking the 2016 universe. 2016 was the year of Medina-writing-machine and we shouldn't surprise ourselves that the gloobas stood little chances under the onslaught of his virtual pen!
For more information on Angel Ramon Medina please visit The Hybrid Nation.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Thank you for joining my mailing list and subscribing to blog Muse!
If we still don't believe we are not alone in the universe, it is the moment to reconsider our beliefs and everything they taught us as kids. Earth is under attack and our future and the future of our world rests on the shoulders of a few—a tiny group of four people—who put themselves on the frontiers of the new global war to save mankind.
Angel, Maria, Dayvon and Luis, popularly called our heroes in the three-book series, knew little about each other when the great evil decided to take over Earth for itself. They didn't have time to get familiar and overcome their differences when they bravely joined forces and stood against the new hostile, ruthless and violent alien race called gloobas, who already fought the similar war a thousand years ago. To save our world, they used a new virtual reality weapon, for whatever happens in this virtual world also happens on Earth.
In The Thousand Years War Trilogy casualties are many on both sides though the dead gloobas outnumber a lot dead humans and members of other alien races. Fight for survival is going on in all corners of known and unknown worlds: Brooklyn, Hollywood, the Arctic Core, the Solar System, black holes, outer space. Action scenes line up one after another like in a furious action motion picture, especially in The Thousand Years War and Revenge of the Gloobas: The Third Book of the Thousand Years War, while Framed: The Second Book of the Thousand Years War gives us the brief moment of deceptive break when we get to feel the taste of a normal life of our heroes. In this central—and the shortest— part of the series, Angel, a victim of dirty politics and human enemies, has to justify his good name and his family's good name before he can take matters back into his own hands and sets himself into the ultimate and final showdown with the gloobas.
Even though all three books need additional polishing and editing and the author's writing skills a little fine-tuning (Revenge of the Gloobas much less than The Thousand Years War and Framed), this Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican young writer gave us an amazing sci-fi adventure saga. On 1,030 pages (brace yourself for a long reading!) Angel Ramon Medina gave us evidence of his very vivid imagination and enormous capacity to write much and to write fast!
It should not be left unnoticed that in only seven months Medina wrote, designed, self-published and marketed three of his novels and Angel's Nightmare Adventures short story, which is a 2016 precedent! So whether we like alien-related stories or not, we must give Angel Ramon Medina credit for rocking the 2016 universe. 2016 was the year of Medina-writing-machine and we shouldn't surprise ourselves that the gloobas stood little chances under the onslaught of his virtual pen!
For more information on Angel Ramon Medina please visit The Hybrid Nation.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Thank you for joining my mailing list and subscribing to blog Muse!
The Stars Just Watch Review
The Stars Just Watch by Jonathan HillMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
"I just wish that we could be honest. (...) I just wish - I wish - everyone around us knew about us. And once they know, they know and that's it. There's nothing else to fear. (...) The thing I fear most is the thing I want most to happen."
The Stars Just Watch is a powerful story of profound love that happens in the wrong time and wrong place. A story that wraps us in its aching embrace as the stars wrap the night on the eve of destruction. When lives part because the battle cry is calling, leaving those who stay to wait and hope and tremble in desperation.
The night sky is sparkling with stars and each star is a tear from heaven shining on the faces of Jack and Cliff. In their last evening together, in their last embrace, a hug, a kiss, a firm grip of fingers. "If you die, then I shall kill myself. I shall. I shall kill myself!"
Jonathan Hill condemned us to the heart-wrenching and gut gripping war story full of grace, pain and darkness we drink in one gulp as a bitter remedy. A story of two men in love, forbidden, doomed and hidden under the cover of brotherhood. But as the war has no mercy to the millions of people all over Europe, their secret is merciless to Jack and Cliff. As a sudden flash from a gun, it lights up and hits the face of Cliff's wife Violet with a shock of recognition and realization, crumbling their world like the house of cards they played only hours ago.
No love should be hidden as the worst imaginable crime. No two lovers should suffer as Jack and Cliff did. Their dream is simple, honest, so common.
"The sun is shining. (...) And we are walking through a park together. We're looking at the trees and you're pointing out a squirrel to me. (...) We continue to walk. And the entire time, the entire time, we are holding hands. (...) You say that your hand feels safe, nestled in my own. But mine feels just as safe wrapped around yours. Then we turn a corner and there are people. People everywhere. (...) And everyone is going about their own business. And we walk amongst them holding hands, and not one person turns to look at us. No one stops, no one stares. No one turns. And it is beautiful."
The Stars Just Watch is a new version of the story previously released under the title Is it Her?.
Please also read my reviews of Not Just a Boy, A Christmas Outing and This Crazy Thing I Call My Life by the same author.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!
Bernard Jan
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