Victory

Rating:
Summary: Victory
Review: Do not waste your hard earned money on this book. I bought it thinking short stories about WWII would be a great easy read book with very exciting story lines. In no way was this book even close. The only thing that keeps you going to the next story is the hope that the next one will be a little better than the last, which never really happens. Out of all the writers there is one or two that keep your attention but for the most part the writers have done a very poor overall job. You buy this book thinking you will be reading about hero's of WWII and you get stories about a little boy who helps in an aircraft hanger building an experimental aircraft. Not to spoil the ending the little boy turns out to be an alien and goes back to his home planet via a bicycle space craft. "WOW GREAT STORY"

Rating:
Summary: Victory
Review: Do not waste your hard earned money on this book. I bought it thinking short stories about WWII would be a great easy read book with very exciting story lines. In no way was this book even close. The only thing that keeps you going to the next story is the hope that the next one will be a little better than the last, which never really happens. Out of all the writers there is one or two that keep your attention but for the most part the writers have done a very poor overall job. You buy this book thinking you will be reading about hero's of WWII and you get stories about a little boy who helps in an aircraft hanger building an experimental aircraft. Not to spoil the ending the little boy turns out to be an alien and goes back to his home planet via a bicycle space craft. "WOW GREAT STORY"

Rating:
Summary: A Smorgasbord of WW2 stories
Review: I agree with another reviewer that this book is somewhat of an anachronism; I too, perceived a similarity between these stories and pulp war stories from the late forties through the sixties.It is a veritable grab bag of stories that vary from quite good "The Sea Witch" to the yawner "Hanger Rat". To me, the two best stories by far deal with combat missions in a PBY flying boat in the south pacific in early WW2, they are fast paced, have good character development, show the authors spent some time with historical detail,and ,finally,seem plausible. It goes down hill from there to me, but everybody has their favorites on the smogasbord! In short, if you are old enough to remember war pulp stories and enjoyed them, then you will probably enjoy this compendium; if not, you may find many of the stories too tedious or far fetched to maintain your interest. I give it 3 stars solely on the strength of the 2 PBY stories.

Rating:
Summary: Very uneven stories
Review: I only picked up this book because Stephen Coonts name was on it. "Eyes of the Cat" was the best story. "Hangar Rat" was a total waste of time - the hanger rat turns out to be an alien. How does that fit into a WWII book?

Rating:
Summary: Very uneven stories
Review: I only picked up this book because Stephen Coonts name was on it. "Eyes of the Cat" was the best story. "Hangar Rat" was a total waste of time - the hanger rat turns out to be an alien. How does that fit into a WWII book?

Rating:
Summary: Some great stories, some not so
Review: Some of the stories in this books are excellent reads. Both the PBY stories are well constructed and written. My favourite, by Harold Coyle, was the story of the assault on Tarawa. I read the book two or three weeks ago and the metal images of the jungle fighting described still linger.

A couple of lightweight tales by Harold Robbins and David Hagberg detract, I believe, from the overall weight and authority of the book as a whole, but if you are an afficianado of WWII stories, then this book is well worth a read.

Rating:
Summary: Readers of any genre will find satisfaction from this volume
Review: They really aren't around anymore, but from the 1930s through the 1970s, there was a proliferation of what became known in the trade as "adventure" magazines. These ranged in quality from the semi-respectable (Argosy) to the not so respectable (a veritable slew of titles, such as Stag and the right-out front For Men Only). They featured stories of spies, derring do and jungle intrigue, but they primarily contained war stories. Lots and lots of war stories. The covers often told the tale regarding the type of quality you could expect within; this was particularly true of Stag, which featured damsels who were either in distress (especially with respect to the state of their undergarments) or inflicting distress upon U.S. soldiers who were tied to chairs and doing their best to appear panic-stricken. All of these magazines, alas, are long gone, or at least don't seem to have the circulation they used to. I was reminded of them, however, by the publication of a mammoth volume of war fiction titled VICTORY.

VICTORY is a companion volume to COMBAT, both of which are edited by intrigue-meister Stephen Coonts. VICTORY is a doorstop of a volume, weighing in at well over 700 pages and consisting of ten previously unpublished pieces by masters of the war story. The stories in VICTORY range in length from fifty to over one hundred pages; if they had appeared in any of the adventure magazines, they would have been serialized. Most of the stories in VICTORY would or could have found a home in Argosy, though one --- "Blood Bond" by Harold Robbins --- is definitely Stag material. More on that in a minute.

The stories in VICTORY do not glorify war. Far from it. All of the stories are set during World War II, with the exception of "Honor" by Ralph Peters, set immediately thereafter. It is difficult to pick an immediate favorite; the average reader may have several, for different reasons. Coonts's own "The Sea Witch," which opens VICTORY, begins as a fairly predictable tale with an unpredictable ending and that utilizes an unexpected technique to catch the reader flatfooted.

"Blood Bond" is typical Robbins. It is a spy story, dealing with a plot to kill Hitler, and stands apart from the other tales due to its unrelenting scatological narrative. Robbins writes the way James Bond really thinks. Though Robbins, gone for several years now, had his share of detractors, he never inflicted boredom on his audience, and this previously unpublished work continues his streak, even in his absence.

David Hagberg's "V5" concerns the German rocket that could have turned the tide of World War II and the Allied military and espionage components that feverishly work together, though at some distance, to ensure that the project never makes it off the ground.

Peters's "Honor" deals not with Americans in the war but with a German officer in the war's aftermath, trudging through the nightmarish ruin that is postwar Germany as he tries to return home to his wife. The conclusion of "Honor" is predictable, almost from the first paragraph; it is the journey, not the close-to-foregone destination, that is important here.

The biggest surprise in VICTORY may be "The Eagle and the Cross" by R.J. Pineiro, a tale of an American pilot who is sent to the Eastern front to train Russian aviators during the final months of the Battle of Stalingrad. The bittersweet ending is perhaps the most haunting of any tale in the book.

With VICTORY Coonts again demonstrates that his talent as a writer is matched by his editorial abilities. While this volume is aimed at a more narrowly defined audience, the quality of the stories involved should, for the most part, satisfy the more discerning reader of any genre. Recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Rating:
Summary: Good World War II Coverage.
Review: This book is in the same classification as the Combat book.In
this book you have ten authors write stories about World War II.
Stephen Coonts writes about a Catalina flying boatwho are doing battle with the Japanese in the Pacific.Harold Coyle does a story about the battle on Guadalcanal with the Japanese that earned this area the name of Bloody Ridge.Jim Defelice tells about an American pilot who parachutes into Germany to gather
intelligence and gets decieved.Harold Robbins tells a story about someone whi is sent to kill Hitler.Dean Ing tells a story about an effort to build an interceptor to stop a Nazi super weapon.Barrett Tillman tells of the role of a flamethrower operator in a battle at Tawara against the Japanese.James Cobb
tells of a Catalina searching for Japanese radar in the Pacific.
David Hagberg tells of allied agents trying to stop a Nazi superweapon that can cause havoc in the United States.R.J. Pineiro tells of an American pilot who trains Russian pilots in new Aircobras.Ralph Peters tells of a German soldier going home on foot after the war has ended.All in all this was an interesting book.It ranked as an equal to Combat.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the money--not even close
Review: This book was a great disappointment. I have a habit of passing along books to friends when I am done with them. I'd be embarrassed to recommend this one to anybody, even if I'm giving it to them for free. Reading it was a waste of time. David Hagberg's "V5", the second story of the three in this book, was okay. Not great, but okay.

The first story, by Stephen Coonts, "The Sea Witch", was on the level of a junior high school writing project. Poorly written, with a weak plot, I felt robbed of my time when I finished reading it. It's a short story, so I finished it, but I felt foolish for continuing my reading after I realized how poor it was.

Barrett Tillman's "Flame at Tarawa" was marginally better, but really not by much.

Don't waste your money on this book. If you feel the need to connect with WWII heroics, take your $7 and give it to a veterans' charity! You'll feel much better afterwards than you would if you spent the money on this dreck and wasted your time reading it.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the money--not even close
Review: This book was a great disappointment. I have a habit of passing along books to friends when I am done with them. I'd be embarrassed to recommend this one to anybody, even if I'm giving it to them for free. Reading it was a waste of time. David Hagberg's "V5", the second story of the three in this book, was okay. Not great, but okay.

The first story, by Stephen Coonts, "The Sea Witch", was on the level of a junior high school writing project. Poorly written, with a weak plot, I felt robbed of my time when I finished reading it. It's a short story, so I finished it, but I felt foolish for continuing my reading after I realized how poor it was.

Barrett Tillman's "Flame at Tarawa" was marginally better, but really not by much.

Don't waste your money on this book. If you feel the need to connect with WWII heroics, take your $7 and give it to a veterans' charity! You'll feel much better afterwards than you would if you spent the money on this dreck and wasted your time reading it.