Rating:  Summary: great series, but the pace needs to be picked up. Review: I agree with the other reviewers that The Corp is a terrific series. I picked up Book IV, which my dad had bought, and then I was hooked and bought the rest of the series. As a writer myself, I really admired Griffin's ability to tell a gripping story and develop interesting, believable characters. I especially like the fact that the characters all have the strengths and weaknesses. For instance, Flem Pickering is courageous and honest, but he drinks too much and has a tendency to run off at the mouth. McCoy is brave and smart, but arrogant and hot-tempered, too. My criticism of this particularly book is that it's moving too slow ... it's taken eight years to get through just two years of the war! I also agree with other reviewers who have noted that the seris is veering away from the regular Marines and is now much more about the OSS. I find the stories about the regular Marines much more compelling. One criticism of the series as a whole is that there are a lot of glaring editorial goofs that either the author or a copy editor should have noticed before the books went to print. For instance, Capt. Galloway's age keeps shifting back and forth from 25 to 28 and slimy Lt. Macklin's first name is, at various times, "John", "Richard" and "Robert." Stuff like that is easy to fix and needlessly detracts from what is otherwise an excellent series. Finally, as a woman, I'd like to seesome likeabel, sympathetic women characters who are something other than nurses or upper-class women having affairs with Marines. How about some female characters as war correspondents, WASP pilots, mechanics, etc? But those are picky points.All in all, it's a great series that teaches us younger readers a lot about the sacrifices that our grandparents made during WWII.
Rating:  Summary: Good but we're losing track of the Real Marine Corps Review: Griffin knows how to write a story and yes the Corps has a very colorfull history, but it seems like Griffin is going into too much detail compared to how he wrote the Brotherhood of War series. I think Griffin is a wonderful writer, just too much detail and taking forever with the Marine Corps series. Get back to the Real Corps and the real heroes.
Rating:  Summary: The Never Ending Series Review: I want to start off by saying that I really like Mr. Griffin's work. I started of by reading his "Brotherhood of War" series. My main problem with this series is that it is taking too long and has too many charcters. I read the first book of this series, "Semper Fi" when I was a freshman in college; now I am 32 years old. Twelve years later and we have not even gotten through WWII yet. In the first book the series was billed to follow a few characters through the Marine Corps from 1939 to the present; the present then being 1987. First there is too much of a gap between titles of the series and there are so many characters now; it is hard to keep track of them all. The pilot, Weston, does any of us really care that he is in love with two different women? Pickering, who cares about him as a character, if I have to hear him complain one more time about Donovan or the President or MacArthur, I may become ill. Pick Pickering, McCoy's friend, he started out interesting but now he is just a cliche. Lt. Sampson, more unnecessary window dressing. Does anyone even remembe Lt. Joe Howard?, he was almost a main character a few titles ago and now he ahs disappeared. This title is ostensibly about setting up a weather station in the Gobi desert to help in the future air campaign against the Japanese Islands. However, it is drawn out and takes over third of the book to get to the main point. We have to wade through a MAGIC compromise; Pickering fighting with the OSS heirarchy; McCoy complaining how he hates the nickname, "Killer." Pick acting like a wild teenager his first time away from home. This was the longest book of the series but not the most engrossing. I probably will read the rest of the titles Mr. Griffin comes out with in this series but I am begging him to going back and concenrating on the main charachters and getting the storyline moving. Also, stop wasting your time with the other series you keep writng, ie "The Soldier Spies"; the OSS series in Brazi; and that police series. None of them have the potential of the "Corps" if you get your focus back.
Rating:  Summary: slipping here a bit..... Review: In Danger's Path is the longest and ,to me, the most ponderous of the Corp series. I have been reading it since its debut, and it has been my favorite of Griffin's various series, but this one misses the mark rather badly. The usual fast paced action just isn't here and as one previous reviewer mentioned the focus has moved from the Corp to covert operations. The plot of this book centers on the weather station in the Gobi Desert,(an operation refered to in several other books, but now no longer on hold)and group of American refugees from Japanese occupied China. One flaw I noticed is that throughout the books, any one with knowledge of "Magic" cannot be sent into any situation where they may be taked prisoner, but apparently this rule does not apply to Capt. McCoy, since at one point he is asked if he knows what "Magic" is, and replies he doesn't know but he can guess, which he does accuratly, and is promptly sent on a dangerous mission anyway. I have throughly enjoyed the Corp series, but let's get back to the Marines, Mr. Griffin, and leave the OSS stuff to the other two series you have to deal with it......
Rating:  Summary: If not the Best, It's close. Review: In Danger's Path is some of Griffin's best work. It's the kind of story you don't want to put down until the end and then you want the next installment. I've read most of his other works and like how Griffin writes about a person not just a chapter in a book. It's a good story.
Rating:  Summary: Best Corps saga yet... Review: If you don't like Griffin's characters, then I'm sorry, but we just don't relate. While this may not be a barn-burning, page-turner like the better Clancys or Ludlums, the characters are just so real, so endearing, and so incredibly COMFORTABLE. Griffin's series on the Corps does not focus on major battles or blood & guts, but if you read for pleasure, and if you have even the slightest interest in accurate representations of military life and WWII in particular, this one's for you.
Rating:  Summary: All buildup and little payoff Review: This book was a disappointment. Griffin pads out the story with lots of extra soap opera intrigues and romances, but the action is constantly delayed. It reminds me of old Saturday morning serial adventures at the movies--cliffhangers. It's one thing to write a series of books that genuinely make up a saga, but it is another to spread out the action into several books when in fact it could be greatly condensed. I definitely felt like Griffin was stringing me along for the purchase of another book when I got to the end of this one.
Rating:  Summary: 547 pages of buildup to a climax and 2 pages of story Review: I really like Griffin's books and am eager to find a new one. But, I was disappointed in the ending of this book. Griffin spent 547 pages building up to a gathering of all his characters and then left me feeling empty at a few pages of the gathering occuring and then ending. I expected more story at the end and the book probably could have lost 100 pages in the middle and added another 100 at the end.
Rating:  Summary: Entertaining, but weakening Review: I have been reading Griffin's novels for years (all of them except the new Cletus Frade one) and have found them vastly entertaining (romance novels for guys, basically). These are great yarns, but...but the different series are all going downhill, this one in particular. Without going into detail, Pick and the gang return and deal mainly with bureaucracy and have an adventure where nobody important really gets hurt, except Pick gets in trouble because he can't exercise self-restraint--a bad characteristic in a combat pilot. Like I said, I love this stuff but enough is enough. FWIW here are what I see as the major problems: 1) Although set in the greatest war in history, there isn't any action. In over 3,000 pages of writing, are there more than 100, maybe 200 of combat? These people are military men, let's get them on Tarawa (which, granted, hasn't happened yet), in a MAG on a carrier or in the Solomons, anything other than sleeping with a married woman in Memphis or dining with some Washington politico. OK? And get rid of the OSS crud, unless you plan on linking this one with the other two WWII series where, incidentally, nothing happens either. There was a war on, you know. 2) Key people keep dropping out. What happened to Stecker's kid? Joe Howard? Macklin? Is Ellen Feller gone forever? 3) Stop the lengthy regurgitations of occurrences from past novels. It's filler, OK? Anybody who starts a series at Volume 8 deserves to be lost. Work on the plot, what little of it there is. 4) If you follow point three, you'll stop making continuity errors, which are becoming legion. 5) Get rid of the cliches. If I ever see the phrases "their eyes locked", or "strangely [or oddly] enough [or erotic]", or "splendid fellow" again I will commit violence. And how many times do with we have to see "NMI"? Try writing for a change. 6) For the love of God, Montresor, when referring to Scotch whisky, it's spelled "whisky", not "whiskey", and it's never drunk with ice, only neat with a little water added. 7) Women are people, too. It might be nice to see one with a personality. By the way, isn't there a woman in the world who has the wherewithal to keep her virtue until marriage? Not in these novels; it's lust at first sight. 8) It's a little inconsistent for Pick Pickering (or is it Matt Payne, or Cletus Frade, I can't keep them straight because they're the same character) to sleep with anyone who has a pulse, and then get mad at a guy who's sleeping with the Sainted Widow (and it was a plot mistake to compromise her virtue). Enough said. Despite the nitpicking, I eagerly await the next Corps installment (my favorite, with the cop series next--the two OSS series stink), but it really wouldn't take much effort to improve the work product--a decent editor and some plot development should do the trick.
Rating:  Summary: Hurry Up! Review: Another fine an example of W.E.B. Griffin's story telling, in recreating those actions of a small band of Marines in WW II. The political in fighting between the Chief's of America's armed forces, the intrique of FDR, rolled into a fast paced novel. My only complaint, at the rate this series of books are being written and published, we'll be well into the next century before the end of WW II!
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