bloguldesefe

As a Last Kingdom - LK (book and TV) series great fan, I was incredibly disappointed with this one - where LK is serious and dark and warrior-mindset like, this is melodrama, soap-opera/telenovella great passions and romance.

The male MC is a non-descript Mary Sue that does not seem to exist (so far from Uthred), the female MC is ridiculous and annoying and wildly-reacting to anything (plus everybody wants to rape her, that seems to be her main role in the book, rape-target), the antagonist is pumped-up nasty in a ridiculous Banderas style and so on.

The writing itself is better here than LK, but the story and characters are teenage-drama level.

The battles are very well done, but too few among the plenty passion-drama moments.

I bought the entire 4 book series at once - now they all go straight to garbage.

So, final warning: if you are a Last Kingdom fan, this is NOT for you!

Ok, the words flow quite nicely, i liked that, but where's the story? Where's the sense behind the writing?

foarte interesantă și, din fericire, obiectivă (lucru rar întâlnit în istoriografia românescă), dar spre final își pierde suflul și devine nițel plictisitoare

Boring,

Good book with some good Eastern Front combat, but the MC is too super smart, super lucky, super brave, super admired, superhero, to be 100% believable - definitely less than other ww2 German veterans memories. Also, a lot of the book in non-combat (him in Germany and Italy).

Superficial, with many blatant historical inaccuracies.

Could there be a more wicked, cruel, evil, sadistic, inhumane, thieving, coward creature than a Russian?

Well, yes, of course.

A communist Russian...

Good story, bad writing. Also, 1st person narration really doesn't work here.

Very good graphic art, but lame, unoriginal story.

Too detailed and dense and therefore rather boring. Also, too cold (the names don't feel like people, just names).

Way too 60s for my taste.

Sincer, m-a plictisit considerabil. E mult mai lent și mai slab decât Circe. Până la jumătate încă nu se întâmplase nimic, iar când au început cât de cât, deja nu mai voiam decât să trec mai repede prin pagini. O serioasă dezamăgire față de Circe și față de laudele numeroase.

The first 3 chapters, from a strategic POV, are excellent. 5/5
The rest, from a tactical POV, are so detailed and overburdened with names, places, units, dates and so on (and always jumping between different engagements) that, without equally detailed maps every few pages, are useless and quicky turn boring. And there are no such maps. 2/5
I must add that I already knew many of the generals and the general layout of the battles and I still could not follow the book.

Excellent worldbuilding, amazingly accurate predictions for 50 years later, very good ideas - but the writing, i hated the fragmented, disjointed writing and the too large gallery of superficial characters.

The written version conveyed the ideas much better. Here they are muddled and simplified into vagueness till it turned boring.
I also strongly disliked the form in which they are expressed (a trial, or discussions between professors and a child) and found the graphic art mediocre at best.

Describes well the periods of captivity, covalescence and classes. Almost no combat memories though. Why? Maybe because this so called officer was always first to withdraw, to get drunk, to be happy avoiding the front... also zero empathy towards his comrades, zero care towards his soldiers, self-agrandisment, “me so smart” “angels watching over me” and so on. A very crappy officer and a pretty crappy civilian too.
Unfortunately, that's how war memories usually work for the losing side: the honorable officers die and the dishonorable survive to tell the tale...

Foarte greu de dat o notă.
La idei și atmosferă, e spectaculoasă, impresionantă și memorabilă.
La execuție literară, cel mult mediocră, plus lungită și, de la jumătate, plictisitoare.
Suma e parcă totuși mai mare decât totalul părților...

Poorly written (or/and translated),
huge part not about the war and extremely boring (e.g. where he went to school, but not as a personal story, just history book style, the uninteresting history of his family, of his village, of his native region and so on, and so on),
very little and superficial about the first weeks of being captured (prisoner immediatly behind the front),
almost zero about the rest of years (prisoner in Gulag, various work camps),
practically zero about other comrades, zero war (or local) context,
some parts obviously retrospectively thought (anti-Nazi, poor Russians such a nice people),
some laughably not believable (2 Germans hiding in a ditch, a Russian comes close enough to stand on one's hand for a while, does not notice them - come on, reader, imagine standing on someone irl, would you not feel a living being so close?!!),
zero feeling (so distant it seems written by AI),
extremely short - virtually they are captured in 1944, the end.
Not recommended at all; with all due respect to Leutnant Ehlert, this is a waste of time.
PS. Definetely not Chilling. Not much Story either.
Also (joke warning) Stalin from the title doesn't show up :)

Fascinating subject, but boring, convoluted and vague approach.
The author knows her stuff (good history researcher) but is unable to pass it on to the readers (very, very poor writer).
Not recommended.

Worst case of “tell don't show” i've read in many years. Terribly bad.
After several boring and consecutive lectures, some ridiculously disguised as dialogues between characters explaining the world they have lived their entire lives, some actually 3rd person auctorial lectures not disguised at all... i gave up, feeling like 3rd grade.
Too bad for the probably good worldbuilduing (not so much for the fantasy, even YA, characters).

Probably the best ww2 Eastern Front memoirs I've ever read (I have read many real, non-fiction, from Germans, Romanians, Russians).
It succesfully and uniquely combines Remarque (All quiet on the western front) style sensibility and introspection with Sven Hassel style combat scenes (some better than Hassel but also way harder, since there s no “funny” relief here).
Also the hardest and most traumatic ww2 memoirs I've ever read - it requires the reader to take often breaks, so as not to literally burst into tears.
Also probably the best in describing ongoing Ptsd (i mean during the war, not after) and the impossibility to interact with civilians.
Memorable book, but terrible to read (in the traumatic sense, in the literary one it's really writer - not soldier - level, mostly reminding of Remarque).

This is just Neolithic historical fiction pretending to be fantasy pretending to be dying Earth scifi, and poorly written all the way (feels like reading a cold synopsis of the real story). The MC is also not relatable and the other characters are one-dimensional cardboards.

Did not like the writing style.
Did not manage to grab my attention, even less to keep it.

Not a cyberpunk, despite the title. Not really scifi either, but an action thriller with a (way too) large cast of one-dimensional cardboard characters and way too many deus ex machina and coincidences. Fun for about half, but bogging down towards 2/3. Not nearly Old Men War level - and I don't consider that a masterpiece...

Superficial and very “seen it before”. Not really bad, nothing to remember, either.