Rating: 
Summary: Hard-hitting war thriller aims for the heart...
Review: 'Victory goes not to the side with the biggest guns, but to the side with the best shots...'Staged against the backdrop of the shattered city of Stalingrad, War of the Rats is both a cold-sweat thriller and a heart-rending glimpse at one of the pivotal battles of the second world war. The real events on which the book is based have be alternately dramatised since; in the Jude Law film, Enemy at the Gates. This novel however is far more engaging, chock full of nail-biting cat and mouse encounters as the two patriotic snipers duel to the death. Like good Clancy or Crichton, Robbins' novel cleverly balances historical and technical fact with dramatic fiction, thrusting the reader into the thick of the action. Its not all gunplay however, and perhaps the real strength of this book is the chilling human realism given to the quieter moments...one can't help but feel a shudder of grief at the thought of the main, and supporting characters surviving day by day amidts the horror of war. Despite that last comment, this isn't really a 'war is hell' novel, and there's nothing preachy thrown in to upset the pace. What you do get is gritty, often brutal action and believable empathetic characters. I'd highly recommend this to any WW2 buff, but equally to anyone after a cracking good thriller.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, could be better
Review: A vividly imagined novel by an author who appreciates the scope of his canvas. I enjoyed it overall and noticed only a couple of technical errors.
As a novel, though, it does have flaws. Robbins can't decide if he's writing a history of the battle, or fiction about a sniper duel that's a tiny part of it. So the focus jumps around, and leads to, among other things, a long, anti-climactic end.
I also feel that he takes far too many liberties with Mr. Zaitsev's character and personal affairs. This was (is?) after all a real man who deserves more respect. For his purposes, Robbins should have invented a character - he's good at that.
Also, the reader spends far too much time in the head of the protagonists as they consider the meaning of life etc.; this becomes very wearing. I found myself skipping this stuff after a while.
Altogether, the book was good but would be better at two-thirds its length. I merely note this fact since - as publishers clearly no longer employ editors - a more thorough effort would be too much to expect.
Rating:
Summary: Brick Dust and Blood!
Review: An excellent read. What a great choice of subject matter. The two main characters, the German sniper Thorvald and the Soviet sniper Zaitsev are well constructed. When the novel concentrates on their thoughts, motivations and actions it works extremely well with great atmosphere [appropriately bleak.]This book is a real page turner. However, the one flaw I did find was too much ersatz poetic rumination on the part of the Soviets. The inevitable love story also detracted from what could otherwise have been a ''thundering good read.''If Mr. Robbins had kept War of the Rats a quote-unquote ''man's book'' [I'm sure men are 95% of his readership] then he would have been better served. More emphasis on the snipers, their thoughts and actions. A more linear story along these lines would at least put this book on the same bookshelf with The Naked and the Dead. Still a good read. Recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Does not live up to the hype
Review: As a work of pure fiction, this book would be mediocre and somewhat enjoyable. As a work of historical ficiton, it is noticable light on the "history" and heavy on the "ficiton", and thus fails on several levels.
As others have pointed out, there are many technical inaccuracies. Robbins' insistence that the Mosin-Nagant is a superior rifle to the K98 because of its reliability, ruggedness, etc. leaves out the fact that Soviet soldiers had special oils and lubricants to keep weapons functioning in cold weather (it is not an intrinsic property of the rifle.) His allowance that the K98 is a gram or so lighter is rather irrelevant (we're talking about a heavy pair of rifles here, and a gram's difference in weight is not really worth noticing, especially in relation to snipers who will be firing the majority of their shots in the prone position.) These sort of details are important in a book so centered around rifle marksmanship.
In another instance, a platoon of Germans sing the Horst Wessel song together (the song of the Nazi party.) Now, the Germans are certainly the villians and agressors in this conflict, but aren't there enough true bad things to say about them, without implying that they are all card-carrying Nazis as well (in fact, only a minority of soldiers were.)
Tania Chernova, a real combatant at Stalingrad, is transformed from a Russian into an American who gets involved in the conflict because she happens to be visiting her Russian grandparents when an SS einsatzgruppen rides into her village and kills them both. She manages to pass herself off as a Russian and fights as a partisan before the Stalingrad battle. Because her parents are Russian, I can accept that she can speak the language like a native and that she knows something about local customs. I cannot accept, however, that she has traveled between the US and Soviet Russia multiple times during the paranoid years of Stalin's purges. There is enough the write about the real Tania Chernova (ballet dancer and medical student), who really did fight the Germans, without having to resort to fiction. Instead, she is essentially a Bond girl, screwing half her squad one minute and dealing death to the Wehrmacht the next.
Commisar Danilov, a real paticipant according to William Craig (Enemy at the Gates), also makes an appearance. He is protrayed as the common grunts' best buddy, which is somewhat surprising considering that the Comissars were the ones who turned in soldiers for "defeatist attitudes", shot them in the back if they hesitated while advancing, and didn't take part in combat themselves.
The biggest fabrication, however, is the driving force for the entire plot; namely, Heinz Thorvald, evil German sniper extraordinare. Recent research indicates that the famous "sniper duel" of Stalingrad probably never happened, despite the claims of Soviet sources (who don't exactly have a record for honesty.)
In any case, Heinz is more of a sterotype "evil Nazi" than a realistic character. A fat, condescending, coldhearted aristocrat, Heinz has no qualms about shooting medical aid workers in cold blood to draw out Soviet snipers (the heroic Soviet snipers, of course, do no such thing.) The scene in which Heinz exchanges his personal rifle for an enemy weapon is beyond belief (sniper's weapons are often tailor-made to fit their user exactly, and I have a hard time believing that the top German sniper wouldn't possess such a weapon.) Since the reader has a fair idea of how it's going to end, there is little suspense when the duel is settled. Afterwards, Robbins does try to create some suspense by having a character's life hang in the balance, but this remains unresolved, other than the generalized "the Germans lost the war". In fact, the entire thing pretty much remains unresolved, contributing to the number of comments here about how lousy the ending was.
Still, the book does have its moments, such as Zaitsev's platoon's suicidal attack across the Volga at the Germans, or the desperation of Christmas Eve in encircled Stalingrad.
Better books on this interesting and tragic battle are "Stalingrad" by Beevor and "Enemy at the Gates" by Craig.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a classic of the "love during wartime" genre.
Review: As one of the few people lucky enough to have read this book prior to its publication date, I feel that I almost have to add my name to the current list of reviewers who think that it may be a real classic. I was with the author when he researched the book in Stalingrad and elsewhere, and knew the story was fabulous long before the book was written. The raw material was just so strong that it couldn't miss. What I hadn't expected was how well David would integrate the adventure, romance and humor found in one of the bleakest battles in history to create a classic tale that covers all aspects of the human spirit. As a historian, I found the book well researched and worth reading for the understanding it gives of the Battle of Stalingrad alone. But there is so much more. You can't read a single chapter without being drawn to read the next, and you can't find a single character that doesn't stir the imagination. This is a great book, and I'm really proud of what David has done with the basic story he found on his travels to Russia. It is a fitting tribute to all those who fought in Staligrad, and to David Robbins himself as an author.
Rating:
Summary: I loved this book
Review: I drive quite a bit during my commute to and from work, so I got this book on tape from my library. In three years of borrowing books on tape, this one was by far the best of all and every minute of the story was enthralling. I am interested in the battle for Stalingrad and had read William Craig's "Enemy at the Gates" but found Robbins' tale much more vivid and compelling. Whereas Craig paints a somewhat dry, remote picture of the conflict of Stalingrad, Robbins throws the reader right into the heart of it with a keen eye for description and superb use of larger-than-life characters. The main bulk of the story concerns a "duel" between two famous snipers; one Russian (Vasily Zaitsev), the other German (Heinz Torvald), but Robbins also covers the broader scope of the Stalingrad battlezone including the encirclement and surrender of the German 6th Army. You can almost literally smell the stench of war (especially in one memorable scene involving three Russian soldiers sneaking through a sewer tunnel) around you as he weaves the plot. There is much to be learned from Robbins' work concerning the battle, Russian and German life, the art of sniping, and the methods of the Soviet Union. The book on tape included an interview with the author in which he describes his writing patterns and attention to detail and he struck me as a very dedicated researcher with a good storytelling ability. I will definitely be on the lookout for further works by Mr. Robbins; I was quite sorry to get to the end of this tale.
Rating: 
Summary: ok, just ok
Review: I have to say that this book was at best inconsistent. As long as the author stuck to sniper tactics and actual war "footage" the narrative was quite enjoyable. His attempts at portraying the determination of the Red Army soldiers and civilians to kill the Germans did not measure up. The descriptions seemed to be filled with crude oversimplifications, almost insulting to their memory. The names of the heroes were sometimes misspelled, sometimes misplaced. General Zhukov's name(one of THE key figures of the Red Army) is Konstantin-not Konstatinovich.The names of the non-Russian soldiers were often inappropriate-for example the Georgian didn't sound Georgian etc.
In addition- the love scenes-especially the one in the bunker made me shudder with awful,awkward imagery. The scene read like something out of the "the young and the soviet"
Rating:
Summary: An excellent novel about a sniper duel in WWII Stalingrad.
Review: If you like wartime novels this is a book for you. You will want read it straight through, but you won't want it to end. This is as close to being in the hell that was Stalingrad as you can get without having been there yourself. You will feel that you are crawling through the demolished buildings, keeping your head down to avoid the instant, unseen death that snipers deliver. Indeed, this book is about the ultimate sniper duel. The top snipers from Germany and Russia are sent to kill one another - if Stalingrad doesn't kill them both first. Here you will see both points of view, you will experience the desperation of trying to survive the winter and the war, and you will know what it is like to be a sniper. The stalking, the waiting, the shot, and then you move - before you become another sniper's victim. The book is based on real-life events and extensive research. Details are presented in such a way as to not interfere with the well-developed characters and story line. The entire Stalingrad expereince is present, including the way many of the fighters simply vanished into the fighting or the Russian winter.
Rating:
Summary: The Headmaster vs. The Hare- One of the Year's Best!
Review: Much has been written about the destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad during WW II, a slaughterhouse that resulted in the deaths of over 1 million German and Russian soldiers in vicious urban combat. David Robbins has masterfully crafted a tale of one such war within the war at Stalingrad, the duel between the best snipers each army had to offer. Whether you are interested in the general history of the Second World War, are a German or Russian Army enthusiast, or just happen to like historical fiction, "War of the Rats" is an absolute triumph that you won't be able to put down. With characters that are very much alive and real, you will find yourself caught up in their daily struggles to survive the cauldron of death that saw snipers on both sides exact a heavy toll on the unwary. I devoured this book in less than two days and would read it again in a heartbeat. "War of the Rats" is easily the best book I've read in quite some time.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible, 5 STARS! *****
Review: This is the only 'war' novel I own ... I have The Naked And The Dead by Mailer, but that's it. When I saw the movie, Enemy At The Gates, I was blown away by the sniper plot between Jude law and Ed Harris: if you felt the same, and loved that movie, get this book and read it right away. This is a factual novel, with some writer's guessing thrown in, but with clarity and just cause: a lot of this is documented in letters that survived the war, but there are some scenes in the book, conversations between characters, where the author has to use his own creativity, and he does it brilliantly. If you want a great plot, the sniper's hunt between each other, plus some great, powerful prose that puts you right in the fighting, then grab this one right away. You'll zip through the pages and make this a keeper on your bookshelf. 5 STARS *****.
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