Rating: 
Summary: The feel of pre-war Europe
Review: Alan Furst has written a remarkable series of novels about Europe shortly before WWII. His main characters are minor players in the storm sweeping down upon them. They are fighting to preserve freedom through their espionage and spying.
Furst does a marvelous job of character development: you can't help but feel that you are viewing the world through the eyes of frightened people, who have no control over their own destinies, but are doing their human best. And human is a keyword here, for Furst's characters are human.
The plots of a Furst novel become secondary, I think, after you've read several. This one is about an attempt to stop the flow of Roumanian oil to Germany. It can't be faulted.
But the plot in a Furst novel isn't really important. The plot is well-crafted, but it's the people, the characters who carry the weight.
Jerry
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not Furst's best
Review: Against a backcloth of WWII in eastern Europe gathers the flotsam and jetsam of a war-torn society - a Russian emigre writer seeking salvation; a French ambassador's wife seeking love; Jews seeking escape; British agents seeking secrets; capitalists of all nations seeking profit; and all seeking to deny Roumanian oil to the Nazi regime of Germany.The plot - perhaps a little labyrinthine in construction - pits Serbin - a Russian émigré writer running the Russian mission in Paris - against all the forces gathered to conspire against him. Eventually, (a little too slowly for my liking) a way is decided to prevent the oil from falling into Nazi hands. And then the action takes off, with Furst skillfully taking us from crisis to crisis which Serbin must face. A thrilling - and prolonged - climax, set on the Danube and along its banks, has the reader turning the pages. But did it have to take so long? No matter. Furst captures the atmosphere of a European world turned upside down, and his dramatic writing drives the reader to the climax. A pretty good read.
Rating:
Summary: Another fine tale of life in the shadows of WW2 Europe
Review: Alan Furst has a long-term lease on the espionage shadow world of Europe in the late 1930's and World War Two. "Blood of Victory" is another strong entry in his sequence of novels set in that world (a "sequence" is more appropriate than "series" because, with one exception, all of Furst novels involve different leading characters, although the books do share some secondary characters and certain locales, including the notorious Table 14 at Paris's Brasserie Heininger). Ilya Serebin is a Russian exile writer who finds himself recruited to work against the Germans in France and the Balkans. The secondary characters are marvelously, if efficiently drawn, aiding or obstructing Serebin's uncertain quest. Imagine a movie in cinematic black and white (and infinite shades of green), perhaps with Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet in supporting roles, and you have an idea of the atmosphere in a Furst novel. Nothing is ever clear-cut, no-one is ever impossibly heroic. But the places and the people seem very real.
Rating:
Summary: Another fine tale of life in the shadows of WW2 Europe
Review: Alan Furst has a long-term lease on the espionage shadow world of Europe in the late 1930's and World War Two. "Blood of Victory" is another strong entry in his sequence of novels set in that world (a "sequence" is more appropriate than "series" because, with one exception, all of Furst novels involve different leading characters, although the books do share some secondary characters and certain locales, including the notorious Table 14 at Paris's Brasserie Heininger). Ilya Serebin is a Russian exile writer who finds himself recruited to work against the Germans in France and the Balkans. The secondary characters are marvelously, if efficiently drawn, aiding or obstructing Serebin's uncertain quest. Imagine a movie in cinematic black and white (and infinite shades of green), perhaps with Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet in supporting roles, and you have an idea of the atmosphere in a Furst novel. Nothing is ever clear-cut, no-one is ever impossibly heroic. But the places and the people seem very real.
Rating:
Summary: An Intellectual's Adventure
Review: Alan Furst is a good argument for simply drifting through bookstores. I had never read him before but found his writing so interesting that I am now looking for his other six novels. In "Blood of Victory," Furst creates an émigré writer who has fled Stalin's Russia and is living in a Nazis occupied Paris. He is safe but oppressed. It is 1940 and the German-Soviet Pact is still working. Occupied Paris is not a happy place. We first encounter I.A. Serebin boarding a boat from Romania to Turkey and find one of the interesting realities in modern civilization; travel is essential. For countries to operate people must travel and so even in a dictatorship, passage is possible if the right papers can be acquired. Ultimately, Serebin is convinced to help the British attempt to block the Danube, preventing German access to the Romanian oil that is key to their remaining both militarily and industrially functional. Seeing the world from Istanbul, Bucharest, Paris and Belgrade shortly before the 1941 German attack is a new twist on the Second World War in the tradition of Eric Ambler and other spy chroniclers. This is an intellectual's book (I hope I have not hurt its sales with that phrase) that carries you into a world of smart, reflective people living lives as refugees, intellectuals and activists trying to accomplish something. It is your experience of their personalities and their interactions in interesting and exotic settings, not the James Bond style heroics, which carry the book. It is worth reading for the portrait of the fight between the Iron Shirt fascist movement and the Romanian dictatorship and, in a very Ambler-like tradition, it has vivid believable scenes of street fighting and random civilian casualties that feel all too real. "Blood of Victory" has proven Furst is worth getting to know and I have already found two more of his works for the near future
Rating:
Summary: Tiptoeing Through a Foggy Minefield
Review: At the start of WWII a Russian expatriate tries to prevent Hitler from accessing oil from Ploesti, Rumania. Unburdened by complete sentences or "Joe said ... Mary replied," Furst clearly and credibly describes the settings, from the streets of Paris to a highway carved into a rocky mountainside in Rumania; feelings, from snuggling in bed with a lover, to wondering whether passersby are enemy agents or strollers; and events, as plans are developed and executed with many detours and feints. That the outcome of the war is known does not detract from the suspense of the plot. One can virtually smell, taste and feel what the characters are experiencing. A totally satisfying reading experience.
Rating:
Summary: Not Furst's best, but still a lot to recommend it
Review: Atmosphere. Plot. Character. All are there. I liked this book, but not as much as some of the other Furst novels. Start with some of the earlier ones. Then try this one.
Rating: 
Summary: my first furst! dunno if it'll be my last.
Review: Furst's series came to my attention via Daedalus Books' periodic remainder/discount catalogs wherein his series was promoted for about a year. I eventually found BLOOD OF VICTORY at my local library and acquired it - my first book from his now numerous titles on WWII espionage as a vehicle for the historical thriller. There is indeed much atmosphere and locale in this novel (as apparently there is in the others), ranging from NAZI-occupied Paris to Istanbul, and a very frightening newborn fascist Roumania in between. The events are enticingly murky and various characters who seem benign can become suddenly treacherous as Furst's story unfolds. Characters can also quickly vanish down an alley or into the nocturnal woods, never to be heard from again. Furst is a master at portraying the anxious, high stakes life of the international spy, in this case the Russian emigre I. A. Serebin. Yet when one gets past all the atmosphere and narrow escapes from bombs, Gestapo raids, Roumanian street warfare and Eastern Danube patrol boats (I know, it DOES sound exciting), there is a certain predictability that surfaces in the novel's characterizations. Furst's array of characters seem to come from the suspense novelist's "central casting", almost always conforming to these types rather than acting out in unpredictably human ways that make the real history of WWII espionage so gripping. Sometimes, I felt that the book was more a novelization of all the highlights of great espionage films. BLOOD OF VICTORY was most succesful for me once the action shifted to the Danube: the plot stopped thickening and the action began a'quickening. It was pretty good white knuckling reading up to the end, slightly marred by everyone somehow making good on their hairbreadth escape (a la Hollywood). And there is a denouement, a sort of "chaser", entailing some insouciant hotel boudoir decadence from those wild-and-crazy Yugoslav flyboys (but don't they ALWAYS come through for you, comrade!) and their seen-it-all slatterns greeting the exhausted survivor Serebin with worldweary salutations.
Rating:
Summary: A Furst novel with a plot
Review: I had previously read Alan Furst's novel The Polish Officer, and some time ago I think I read Red Gold. The Polish Officer sticks in my mind though: it's a series of events told chronologically, really almost a short story collection rather than a coherent novel. Blood of Victory is different: there actually is a sort of a plot here, as the hero, emigre writer I.A. Serebin, tries to block the flow of Rumananian oil to Nazi Germany.
Furst is best at atmosphere and characters. Serebin is a tired former Communist who's washed up in exile in Paris, editing a literary journal and writing short stories himself. When the Germans invade he figures it's not his business (he's not French, after all) and goes about his life. As the novel opens he's visiting a sick friend in Istanbul, planning to return to Paris afterwards.
The characters are well-drawn, and the atmosphere is wonderful, full of sights, smells, and circumstances of 1940s Europe. It's the best part of the book, and well-worth the effort. I enjoyed this book over-all, and would recommend it
Rating:
Summary: Is Furst Running Out Of Petrol?
Review: I have enjoyed reading Alan Furst's novels for quite a while now, but Blood of Victory seems a bit too contrived and lacking in psychological depth. This book, in fact, seems to be more of a screenplay than a novel, and I could even imagine the late David Niven - a la Guns of Navarone - playing the book's chief protagonist Serebin. Nazis, shootouts on river barges, military coups - with Niven no longer with us, perhaps we could talk Robert Redford into playing the part. Blood of Victory is not one of Furst's best.
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