Rating: 
Summary: From now on I'll stick to non-fiction for WW2, thank you
Review: "The End of War" is a cliched, tedious piece of historical fiction set in the last days of the Third Reich. The scope is vast, as the author indicated in his preface likening it to a Greek tragedy, but herein lies the novel's downfall. The point-of-views shift so much between the omni-potent "gods" (i.e., FDR, Churchill, Stalin & Eisenhower) and the lesser "players" (Lottie, Ilya et al.) that it is virtually impossible for us to identify with any of the characters. Aside from this, even the action scenes are forced and farfetched. For instance, the Russian protagonist Ilya, in spite of being at the forefront of every major offensive action, seems to have more lives than 9 cats! Not a very realistic portrayal of close combat at all. There is not yet a historical novel on WW2 worthy of comparison to Michael and Jeff Shaara's Civil War trilogy and Steven Pressfield's masterpieces on the ancient Greeks. Alas, there may never be.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: A memorable, well done novel, certainly worth reading. The author has researched his topic and expertly weaves fctional characters into historical situations. At times this novel is quite powerful and moving, the writing superb. Recommended to all interested in WWII, but of equal interest to lovers of historical fiction in general.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining Historical Fiction!
Review: An exciting, well paced historical fiction which has just enough detail mixed with imaginative character sketches. Roosevelt and Churchill are particularly well drawn. You don't have to be a WWII buff to enjoy this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Just For War Buffs
Review: David Robbins has done the cause of WW II history a great favor; he's summed up the political complexity (Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin), the horribble degradation (the vengeful execution of prisoners, the subjection by rape), the reach for some redemption (through the attempt to save just one person), the cruelty of indiscriminate bombing (more vividly described here than I've ever read) all converging in the symbolic nexus of the horror - Berlin - in a fast reading 390 page book. The imagery here is well crafted. This angle on history, in an novel based on fact, feels more real than any purely factual account I've read. The unexpected thing: a German girl and her mom present tragic yet admirable heroes, and I am disturbed to think that these fictional characters represent thousands of real, brutalized people, who have mostly been ignored by history. Hollywood would likely trample the impactfulness of this novel, yet I can viualize several scenes of unequaled power. I think the movie, like the book, could be done on the level of a Schindlers List - eg. become the definative statement on how it ended - not as gloriously as we like to think. I recommend the book, then, not just to war buffs, but to all who want to better understand this tragic event. You will finish it with a feeling of sadness, and maybe anger, and you'll likely admire David Robbin's ability to have conjured up these feelings. Isn't that exceptional for an historical novel? I think 5 stars is thus, very appropriate.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful and perceptive.
Review: David Robbins' third novel continues a remarkable literary arc for this maturing artist. Simultaneously terrifying and tender, it pits the stories of world leaders Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in the closing days of WWII against the fabric of fictional lives of Russian troops, Berlin women and LIFE combat photographer Charlie Bandy, the book's protagonist. From Robbins' realistic expositions of the wrenching, graphic details of war's suffering for soldier and civilian, to his penetrating and credible dissections of the the interior landscapes of towering world figures, the novel humanizes the battle for Berlin as few historical documents can. Throughout, the clarity of detail and lyricism of language craft a compelling, yet chilling, narrative. Powerful and perceptive, yet laced with astonishing tenderness, Robbins' novel lays bare the gory heart of combat and exposes its capacity to wreck and remake the lives of those it embraces.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: David Robbins, I found your book quite engrossing. No doubt you've heard these comparisons before, but it reminds me somewhat of "The Young Lions" and "Winds of War". Panoramic novels of WWII are kind of old news at this point - but somehow you make this one fresh. The battle scenes are especially good, and among the most original stuff in the book. Your imagery is excellent - the clatter of the GIs' gear making them sound like "cicadas", a blush rising up a soldier's scar like mercury in a thermometer. Very well observed! You must have crackerjack 3-D imaging skills to coordinate the battles as well as you do. I like your sense of color also. Your description of the Polish town Posen appeared in my mind like a technicolor aerial view. I enjoyed many other scenes as well - the spookiness of the abandoned corpses in the Hurtgen, the nighttime river crossing (my own father endured several of these - across the Seine, the Somme, the Meuse, and others).
Your characters are introspective guys, not fire-breathing Rambo or Sgt. Rock types at all. Cerebral even. They formulate their own metaphysics of battle. Bandy, when he joins the paratroopers in combat, perceives their tactics as pure geometry - and Ilya experiences the explosions over a besieged enemy fortress with a kind of religious ecstasy. Bandy and Ilya, despite their different roles, come across as similar men. The contrast you draw between Ilya and Misha, though, is quite subtle. When you first meet them, there's the big guy with the muscles and the little guy with the brains, and you figure the former is protecting the latter. Yet Misha eventually gets so tough and hardened that it almost pisses him off when the war ends. Meanwhile Ilya works his way up to lieutenant (truly, a male ingenue kind of role) while revealing himself as more and more (dare I say it?) "sensitive". The relationship between these dudes is at once symbiotic and competitive, and each of them ends up growing into his own version of the other guy (if that makes any sense). When I think of the Soviet Army taking Berlin, I imagine savagery unleashed - but you disarm the reader by playing your characters against type, making them as "nice" as such guys could possibly be.
That Lottie is a puzzling chick. Another interesting characterization. Her egocentric self-absorption and morbid outlook keep the reader guessing. Will she take the cyanide? Will she fink on Julius? I found myself most fascinated by the fact that her mother's relationship with Julius takes Lottie by surprise - ditto for her mother's turning a trick now and then. I'd always assumed women had a sixth sense about the sexual and romantic lives of the other women they're close to - and it seems odd that Lottie should be so clueless. Not that I'm criticizing - not at all. It just makes you wonder about her. The stark, hermaphroditic apparition at the end of the book - when Lottie appears before the Soviets with her hair cut short and yet naked below the waist - seems eerie, but just right. There has been this weird sexual ambiguity in the young lady all along for which this final scene is the perfect epiphany.
Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Review: Great sequel to the War of the Rats. Saw the book and remembered the first I read as a 5 star so I purchased. Not a surprise, a great book as good or better that the first I had read. Being an aspiring writer I followed the plot line,Dialogue, and building the four way storie. A real proffestional writer I would only hope to become that good.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as good as it could have been
Review: I enjoyed Robbins' "War of the Rats" and felt it would have made a better script for the movie "Enemy at the Gates" about the supposed sniper "duel" in Stalingrad. Surprisingly, the weakest parts are those along the Russian front, which should have provided the most compelling story telling opportunities. Which is why I was disappointed with "The End of War." The parts about the residents of Berlin also lack any real resonance, and the passages with the "Giants" (FDR, Churchill, Stalin) didn't ring particularly true. Robbins' condescending attitude towards Churchill (as if he wasn't as smart as FDR or Stalin), the one-dimensional portrayal of Stalin (oooh, he's a bad, bad man!!!), and the Daddy loves Daughter pap with FDR (almost bordering on incestuous, eww) botch what should have been interesting portrayals. The most interesting parts are those with the photographer, Bandy, particularly where he encounters the "Giants" like Churchill and Bradley. But this is too little a part of the novel to make up for the other, slower parts. Overall, it lacks enough plot tension --- we know how this all ends --- to make up for the weak characters, who aren't compelling enough to care about. I'd recommend skipping this one.
Rating:
Summary: True-to-life Depiction
Review: I had the good fortune of reading Corneilius Ryan's Battle for Berlin epic "The Final Battle" only weeks before coming across "The End of War". I was surprised by how closely David Robbins' account parallels Ryan's classic history. Robbins, of course, introduces fictitious characters and ascribes thoughts and words to larger-than-life historical figures like Ike, FDR, Stalin and Churchill. But he seems to get most of the salient facts straight. The result is a gripping work of fiction that appears to be remarkably accurate historically. An all around good read.
Rating:
Summary: "War may be interested in you."
Review: I think I used that title once before in a review of an Alan Furst novel but it matters not, it fits here as well. When Trotsky wrote that he spoke of the whirlpool attraction of war that sucked people in, and he referred to the fact that 'you may not be interested in war but war may be interested in you!' And certainly in the case of the three civilians in "The End of the War," Lottie the cellist, Charley Bandy the Life photographer and Ilya the Russian decommisioned officer-now foot soldier, all are caught in the whirlpool of this horrible chapter of our world history. David Robbins' brilliant novel is the last of a trilogy beginning with Stalingrad ("War of the Rats"), followed by Kursk ("The Last Citadel") and ending here in Berlin. I say trilogy but there really is no connection except the chronology of historical events. The coherence of the three novels is in the relentless cause and effect of the World at War on millions of lives in the war as well as those bystanders and families. Robbins has been criticized for the splintering effect of all of the individual stories, for included in "The End of the War" are representations of/from Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. I feel such criticisms are subjective at best because what we have here is an epic about something of epic proportions. When you have technology combined with will so advanced that 10,000 men can die in a single six-hour battle, perhaps what we need is to have multiple views to help us understand in the larger sense of the word, what happened. For those of us reluctant to bick up a treatise by Barbara Tuchman, Cornelius Ryan, Doris Kearns or Max Hastings, David Robbins offers a compromise. Good stuff. Impossible to put down. Larry Scantlebury
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