As I mentioned in a previous post, I signed up for two months of Kindle Unlimited, with the intention of exploring all the different books on offer. In this case, it was a book by an author featured in one of the blogs I follow (A Ruined Chapel by Moonlight), but not the book he highlighted. This one is the first book of this author's sweeping historical adventure series which sounded very appealing, since it covers my favorite historical period.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
The Old World, Book One in the By the Hands of Men by Roy M Griffis C
This is the first book in a six book historical drama that covers the period of 1917 through the inter-war era stretching across four continents. Once again, it is a very highly rated series of books, scoring 4.7 stars on Amazon and 4.6 on Goodreads. This book earned 4.5 stars on both Amazon and Goodreads. As such, I was looking forward to giving it a read as it covers, as I said in the lede, my favorite period of history. Alas, as you can see from my grade, I am once again in the small minority who was not entirely captivated by it. Though this time, I have some unique reasons for its C grade.
This this story, and I believe the entire saga, feature the lives of the two main protagonists in this first installment, Charlotte Braninov a young Russian woman who had been sent to an English boarding school by her parents concerned about the unrest in Russia prior to World War One, and Lt Robert Fitzgerald the son of an English nobleman. In this book, we meet Charlotte in 1917 as she is serving as a nurse on the Western Front during World War One. During her time spent close to the front lines, she meets Lt. Robert, and well, not to spoil too much of the story, they fall in love. The author goes into great detail about the horror of the war and its toll, spending a lot of word describing the conditions they find themselves in and developing his two main characters and side characters, as well as. It is a heartfelt story told well.
But not for me.
Perhaps as a writer/reader I look on stories a little differently than readers. For example, take the structure of his story. Mr Griffis opens the story with Charlotte as the point of view character. It is from her viewpoint that we meet Lt Robert and we learn of one of his experiences in the war prior to their meeting. This section is then followed by a section with Lt Robert as the point of view character. It turns the clock back and we revisit the very harrowing experience we learn about in part one, but this time in great detail. This structure means that the reader already knows that Robert survives, lessening the tension the narration might otherwise had without that knowledge. As a writer, it seems a strange choice to make, since I think opening with Lt Robert's section would work just as well, or better, while maintaining tension within the situation. But I suppose, knowing there are six books in the series, one might suspect he would survive in any event. Yes, nitpicking. But still?
There are several more substantial reasons why this book did not for me, let's start with one that applies only to me. By chance, this is the third book I've read in the last year that has led me to the trenches of the Western Front. And indeed, the previous ones also featured a nurse, and thus, this book suffered for a certain feeling of familiarity. Indeed, I have this sense of deja vu for some reason when thinking about the events in this story, though I don't know why. It's as if I read similar scenes before. This experience, of course, is unique to me and has nothing at all to do with the book itself. But it left a been there, done that feeling in me.
A more important reason for my modest grade is yet another personal reason. I don't have a visual mind. Action scenes described with great detail do not create a "movie" in my mind, like they might for many readers. This book has many cinema graphic action sequences that are choreographed in great detail and play out over many pages. For people who can conjure up a scenes in their mind from words, they'll be in for a harrowing experience, since the author brings the horrors of battle and the human costs vividly to life. Alas, for me, these extended scenes just don't work. I find them tedious, and I usually skim through them, impatient to get on with what I see as the story. Likewise, I also don't care for extended and detailed medical scenes. Not my jam. I tend to skim read or skip over them as well, and this book has several of those as well. It is about nurses and war, after all. For many readers, however this is a plus.
The author is also a little too, well, present, in the telling of the story, for my taste. He has several passages where he says something to the effect that Charlotte will remember the experience just described in the story for all her life, which bumps me out of the story at hand, since that comment comes out of the future, as it where. In an essay I may've posted already by the time this one is, I mentioned that I don't care for stories that are told deliberately looking back. Just me again.
Griffis also inserts bits of pure history into the narrative, in part for background of the story, but they come off sounding like history lessons, separate from the narration. Indeed, I was left with the impression that it is the intent of the author to "teach" the reader lessons in his stories. Nothing wrong with that, but when the lesson becomes a lecture, it rips the curtains of the story's virtual reality aside. I see the little man in the corner manipulating the levers of the story, and can't ignore him and his manipulations.
This intent to educate the reader came to the fore in what he has Charlotte do at the end of this book, likely to hook the reader into reading the next book. I won't spoil the story by saying what he has her do, but while I can see that there might be some emotional reasons to justify what she does, he has her do something that I find so very, very stupid, in light of various experiences related in this book that I simply can't believe she would do what he has her doing. It seems to be decision entirely driven by the desire of the author to tell a story he wishes to tell - one that is foreshadowed in this book - rather than by any believable motivation on part of the character. She's not an idiot. While many authors often have their characters do stupid things to drive the plot along, in this case, I found the choice he has her make simply unbelievable. It was the author's choice because, I believe he has something he wants to say... To be honest, I'm not looking for lectures in my fiction.
As I say my review criteria above, I like light, entertaining stories. Mr Griffis has written an intense, emotionally charged, historical drama, with, I believe an intent to bring his sweeping vision of this period of history to the reader. Not my jam, but if it sounds like yours, you need look no further. Perhaps the subtitle says it all. No doubt that if you continue on with his well written, sweeping saga it will take you from Russia to Africa and beyond, discovering the history of many things along the way.
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