Peter Souter

A fantastic read, really brings out the true horror of the “Rattenkrieg” (“war of the rats”) that happened in Stalingrad, and the grim toll on all sides, soldiers and civilians.

I'm kind of addicted to reading books adapted from films after seeing the films, then there's always a thing in the back of my head going “They should've had this bit in the film...this bit should've been removed...” over and over. I know you should generally review in a vacuum but I can't help it!

As a book, it's a pretty interesting tale and I enjoyed it. Ben Mezrich has a knack for taking non-fiction and wrapping it up to make it feel like a good fiction narrative. He's a good storyteller, and it's really interesting to see how the the collective hijinks of 2 university students ended up creating the largest social network ever was built.

Pretty good plane read, but it suffers from being a collection of blogs squashed into one book.

As someone who hasn't watched wrestling since he was a teenager, this a great read about an era in wrestling that was over long before I ever started watching recorded late-night RAW on Sunday mornings.

A rare misstep from Coben.

I got into the Myron Bolitar series from reading the third in the series paperback from a loan-library at at station when my Kindle ran out of power. Even though it was halfway through the series, it was a fairly interesting thriller with some snappy lines. After that I managed to power through 1-9 in a matter of weeks. They're all fairly short books, with enough chapter-end cliff hangers and twists to make you want to keep reading.

But another review puts it best: this book feels like another plot that got bolted onto a Bolitar book. And the events in this one just seem a little too farfetched. That says a lot for this series.

I mean, I can deal with murder and mob-related conspiracies. I find an international decades old terrorist group being single-handedly taken out by a sports agent just a bit too far.

There's a few interesting spots, such as the slight digression talking about how things that seemed cool in your twenties seem a lot less so when you're older, particularly relevant when you remember Win is basically 40-something and hiring 18-year old sex-workers.

But even with all the silliness, and the ridiculous plot dealing with international terrorists, UK and French police and home-land security, all quickly brushed off into ridiculous deus-ex-machina situations where Myron's amazing fighting powers and Win's almost super-natural ability to arrive with a sniper rifle at the last minute...

I still enjoyed it. I want to give it 2 stars for all the lazy-writing, over-the-top plot, weird torture justification and tired Win dialogue, but I can't. I did enjoy reading it, I just wanted things to calm down a bit! So it's 3 stars.

I hope Coben returns to Myron being just a sports agent. That was half the fun: the weird sports facts and intrigue. We'll see with the next few books.