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Blood of Victory : A Novel

Blood of Victory : A Novel

List Price: $12.95
Your Price: $9.71
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Blood of Victory is pretty anemic.
Review: I have read all of Alan Furst's books earlier books in order, and usually within a day! I can't finish this one: the characters lack personality, the plot is impenetrable and I found myself just plain bored with it. I was VERY disappointed. I sure hope Furst isn't running out of steam. His other books (especially the two with the French movie maker) are the very best books in the espionage genre I've ever read. Let's hope this book is just a bump in the road.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Pardon my French
Review: I just wanted to point out two erroneous French references on page 104. Considering that the book's main characters live in Paris, I'm surprised by these errors, which betray rather shallow research by the author.

First, Troucelle is described as "a classic product of the Sorbonne's Polytechnique". In reality, the Sorbonne and Polytechnique have nothing to do with each other. The Sorbonne is Paris's oldest university, and a civilian (albeit public) establishment. Polytechnique is an engineering school established by Napoleon and administered by the French military.

While this first error may be forgiveable, the second is not. At the bottom of the page, Furst writes: " '...always the fusees'. It meant fuses, in French political slang..." Actually, "fusee" means rocket. The French word for fuse is "fusible". A French/English dictionary--not a trip to Paris or even a conversation with a French person--would have been enough to avoid this second error.

I just couldn't let these pass. Otherwise, the book is OK, but not as good as--for example--Ambler's best. The atmosphere is nicely crafted, but the pace is rather slow, and the characters don't have as much emotional depth and substance as Ambler's.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Lots of silly blunders - real fun
Review: I start reading Alan Furst's books not in the last place because it describes events closely linked to Russian history. I will not comment on the literature qualities of the books as it may be subjective. But I must warn anybody who might take in earnest the picture of Russia as it is depicted by Mr.. Furst - it is not even close to reality. Some of the funniest blunders are listed below (page numbers are given by the Random House h/c edition):
- (p. 7): "He was ... a decorated Hero of the Soviet Union, Second Class" - there was no such thing as "Hero of the Soviet Union 2-nd class". One could get the Hero more then once instead. There were many cases of two or even three times Heroes, mostly among fighter pilots, who were awarded the title on explicit numerical basis, i.e. for enemy planes brought down
- (p. 14) "...and to eat salted herring and drink Armenian Champagne" - There was no such thing as Armenian champagne, nor there is now. The popular product from Armenia was not champagne but brandy that as they said was a beverage of choice of Winston Churchill. As for the champagne, the best Russian mark comes from Crimea. Besides, the salted herring, being undoutbfully popular among Russians is never eaten with anything else but ice-cold vodka straight
- (p.157): "Take a squad", the captain said... - "My sergeant saw it ..." - at the time of Civil war, there were no officer's ranks in Red Army. Those in command were referred as "commanders": platoon commander, battalion commander, etc, and those were frequently abridged. So a person in command of an army was called "Comandarm", etc.
- (p.220) "The Mannlicher was nice and heavy, ...he...managed to release the magazine" - that should be really not a small achievement, as the magazine of Mannlicher pistols, as well as its Mauser's analog, was not detachable. The loading was done from above through the opening behind the barrel chamber
Apart from the listed factual errors there are several of more general sort, I would say, conceptual ones. For example:
- The hero was a Jew and a communist. To find such a person among functionaries of Russian emigration was as probable as a Negro among KKK bosses in Alabama. Anti-Semitism was one of the staples of White Russian ideology, not to speak about anticommunism. I would not approve it - but it is an undisputable historical fact.
- Mr. Furst's characters move to and fro USSR borders freely. In practice approximately after 1925 it was practically impossible to leave Russia. One can refer for this issue to the memoirs of Bazhanov who was Stalin's secretary in the 20-s. He managed to escape only using his high position and the history of his escape could be a novel much more gripping than any of Mr.Furst,s ones.

This list is far from complete and deals only with the Russian realities. I am sure that Turks, Frenchmen, Romanians and others can find more mistakes. We can even compete in finding the most funny blunder of Alan Furst. Let't have fun!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Another atmospheric thriller from Alan Furst
Review: No one writes about the spy game right before and during WWII in Central and Eastern Europe like Alan Furst. His spare prose, almost poetic at times, conveys quite quickly the murky world of intelligence operatives. We see the dark underbelly of Europe, with the furtive meetings and the casual betrayals inherent in this type of work. The characters are, as always, extremely well-drawn, even the very minor ones. Often the real plot line gets lost, but it doesn't really matter, because of the quality of the writing. The reader is hooked from the beginning, and turns page after page as quickly as possibe, to see how everything develops. There are some old friends from previous books in this one, and some locations that we've seen before, and that adds to the authentic feel of the work. I look forward quite eagerly to every Furst book, and hope that he writes and publishes them for many years to come!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Noir grit in the Shadow of World War II
Review: Ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the face of world-changing events and under the shadow of Nazi domination of Europe. If you like that set-up, then Blood of Victory is a book you would enjoy. The writing is spare but evocative, the setting highly intense and the espionage is engaging.

The hero Serezin is an author and Soviet ex-patriate who is recruited by a sybaritic Hungarian ex-spymaster, now working in conjunction with MI6, to sabotage the Romania to Germany oil export route up the Danube River. Unlike some of his other books, Blood of Victory is a single novel with one overarching plot and not a pseudo-anthology of episodic novellas.

Furst's writing and settings have been described as historical noir novels. This is pretty accurate -- the scenes flit by, the tone is dark, the concepts are interesting, the day-to-day is gritty, and despair gnaws at the back of each character's mind. Furst's strength is his ability to swiftly convey the moods of the various peoples of Eastern Europe as their countries fell (or began to fall) under Nazi domination. Good stuff for those interested in fiction displaying the mood of Europe during the darkness of WWII.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Historical Espionage
Review: There are not many other writers who can write as visually, as imaginative as Alan Furst. The amount of research and reading this man does for his novels is really amazing. Also great is that fact that Furst does not allow his descriptive style to bog down his plots, which are always engaging and absorbing.

Furst takes us on a trip to 1940 Europe, after the fall of France. Britain battles on, but Germany seems absolutely unstoppable. Emigrants from almost every corner of Europe wander the continent, looking for any safe harbor. Émigrés like the Russian I. A. Serabin, a dissident writer who wants to avoid this war and the destruction it causes. However, the circumstances, including an affair with a British spy, bring him into the great game of wartime espionage. He is tapped by welcome Furst veteran, Hungarian Count Polanyi, to device a way in which the German supply of oil from the Romanian fields in Ploesti can be disrupted. Polanyi is now a British agent and is as effective as ever. The plot unfolds slowly and deliberatively, as the Gestapo and the civil conflict inside Romania threaten to destroy the already risky plan. Serabin is forced to journey all through Europe in order to put the pieces together.

Furst is hooked on atmosphere, and he makes us addicts too. Reading one of Furst's books is like taking a time machine back to the days we can only glimpse at in movies like Casablanca. Indeed, many a times I expected Rick to come out of hiding in the number of bars and clubs Serabin visits. His writing reminds me of some of the exile writers of the 1920's, although these writers and academics are faced with a far worst threat than boredom. People like Serabin are forced into war to defend whatever they have left. Furst's other great strength is his characters. Serabin is absolutely fascinating, while Polanyi and his network are intriguing as well. You do not forget these characters for quite a while. The only down side of Furst is that sometimes he is so deliberative that the actual storyline gets a bit muddled. It is a fair price to pay however.

Furst is the best historical espionage writer going. He shows nothing but improvement in this, his latest work.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Bored to tears
Review: This book is so boring it was painful. I started it three times and when I realized that watching the trees go past the train window was more interesting I threw in the towel.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: War May Be Interested in You
Review: This is one of those novels that stays with you for weeks after you've finished it. Like any novel by John LeCarre, you have to work at an Alan Furst novel. It doesn't necessarily come easy.

With the poetry of James Burke at his fingertips, and the haunting portrait of Europe under fire, the truthfully global loss of innocence, Furst begins with a tale that is fascinating for rich, human characters, then for the geography, and finally for the plot. It reminded me of those grainy photographs taken in European train stations in the mid 1930's when people literally ran for their lives.

Ilya Serebin is not interested in war, but as Trotsky wrote, "war might be interested in [him.]" And it is.

On escape from beseiged Russia and communism, torn between a safehouse in Paris and his conscience, reluctant to leave a dying lover and a new one playing the deadly game he has been ante-upped for, Serebin is recruited by the OSS to asssist in a "cockleshell heroes" attempt to block the oil route ('oil, the blood of victory' from which the title is taken] from Romania to Nazi Germany.

It is a classic WWII novel of love, betrayal, confusion and sadness. Despair. Melancholy. I can't recommend Alan Furst enough. He may not be your cup of tea or shot of vodka because of the subject matter, but his writing is brilliant. You get a feel of "real" to the story.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not His Best Outing
Review: This is the fifth of Furst's seven WWII espionage novels I've read, and not one of his best. To be sure, it has all the trademarks of his work: good writing, dedication to period detail, oppressive and dreary atmosphere, exotic locales (Paris, Istanbul, Odessa, Belgrade, etc.), a middle-aged loner protagonist caught up in the espionage intrigues of the time, love interest, a blurry web of operatives. But that's the problem-if you've read a few of his books, you've basically read this one. The characters (especially the heroes) in his books are all starting to run together rather distressingly, and he's over-reliant on atmosphere to carry the minimally plotted stories. What's worse is that the pace of this one is absolutely glacial, there's barely any thrill in the thriller!

The gist here is that in 1940 the Allies are desperate to interdict German access to the vital Romanian oil fields. Having tried to sabotage them once before, they're faced with a tough problem. Paris-based Russian émigré writer I.A. Serebin is drawn into a plot to resurrect an old spy network in an attempt to strike a blow. However, Serebin's recruitment into this venture is never really convincing, and the weaving of the plot is so oblique that it's hard to get drawn in. It's as if Furst is so faithful to building the shadow world that his characters live in that he's forgotten about the reader. Which is not to say this is an awful book or anything, just that he's written better and might benefit from straying a little further from the European theater he's set seven books in.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: One of His Better Tales
Review: This is the first novel that I have read of this author's work in hardcover. "Blood Of Victory", is the newest work from Alan Furst, and it follows the issue of all of his previous novels in soft cover format. I have read all of his tales and have found him to be a very solid, consistent writer. His publisher is amongst the shrillest when praising and promoting his work, and I do not know that this helps. Whether or not Alan Furst joins the ranks of writers like John LeCarre is up to readers not his publicist.

All his previous works have included questions for discussion at the book's end; this book does not although I would guess the soft cover will. One of the points that have always been raised is that the protagonist in his books always is alive at the end of the novel. I believe this is becoming a problem for Mr. Furst does not write about the same character in a series of events, rather a variety of characters experiencing events in a common time period. His stories inevitably include great risk to his primary characters, and when he removes the possibility of the mortality prior to the book's start, he removes an element of suspense. Since his genre involves clandestine work prior to and including World War II, the missing element cannot fail to become a handicap. He also has several reference points that he mentions in many if not all his books. While these elements are repeated they are not critical to a given book, but they can cause a reader to feel they are out of step with some crucial detail or event.

The plot this time centers on the oil fields of Romania, their critical importance to the German war machine, and the variety of attempts to prevent the flow of oil via the Danube. This issue was very real during both of the 20th century's world wars, and Alan Furst uses these historical events to very good advantage.

Mr. Furst has an excellent command of the political history of his chosen time period, and this makes for credible reading that is also well crafted by a talented pen. I have enjoyed his books and will continue to read his work in the future. I hope that he decides to allow for more uncertainty in his work, and by doing so maintain a higher level of tension for his readers.


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