A rip-roaring, if sometimes overly obscure, wartime tale.
A fantastical historical novel set during World War II.
Warner follows up his previous work, Little Anton (2019), with a new story of wartime escapades. The action begins in Washington, D.C., in 1942, and President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill have a lot on their plates. Nazi Gen. Erwin Rommel’s tank battalions may soon threaten the Suez Canal in North Africa; there’s all sorts of “whiz-bang science in the works” throughout the world, and something strange that happened in the air over Los Angeles recently may have involved “non-Earthly and therefore interplanetary” aircraft. Leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt may be “top-shelf Freemasons,” as the latter puts it, but it doesn’t mean they know everything that’s going on. That’s where secret agents like Bernie Rodgers come in. Bernie, a self-proclaimed “switch-hitting mystic gadfly,” is a peppy American who’s as much at home extracting information from Rudolf Hess as he is breaking up an occult blood-drinking ceremony in Portugal. He’s sent to investigate what the Germans may be up to in remote locations such as Iraq and Antarctica. Along the way, Bernie’s companions include a Malian sergeant named Gwafa, an unflappable adventurer named Alice (“as in Wonderland”), and Churchill’s own “hard-drinking, randy, always-on-report, irreverent Godless libertine” grandniece, Bea. Bea and Gwafa met behind enemy lines in Egypt, where they managed not only to survive, but also commandeer a Porsche Tiger Panzer VK 45.01P tank. Little did they realize their ordeal in the desert was merely the beginning of their adventure.
This wild story of wartime interests only manages to get wilder as it goes on. Everything from occultist Aleister Crowley to Atlantean technology manages to play a role in this free-roaming tale, which goes far beyond what one might find in standard history books. Whether the reader buys into certain ideas, such as that ancient Egyptian pyramids were actually used as power stations, the narrative as a whole offers them much to consider—and it does so in a rapid-fire fashion. No sooner are Bea and Gwafa rescued (after nearly being executed) by a British desert raid and reconnaissance group than events turn to scenes in a remarkably comfortable Cairo, followed by a crash course in anti-gravity and propulsion. Some bits of the story feel a little slapdash, however, as in a lengthy discussion that includes a casual mention of how the night sky once held an artificial crystal moon, without any elaboration. For those who are unversed in such esoteric beliefs, some of the book’s conversations can be perplexing; for instance, what are the “Thule, Vril, and Ahnenerbe societies”? Still, such material is successfully held together by scenes of action. The book also offers plenty of tidbits to keeps readers’ interest, thanks in part to the constant presence of real historical figures in the narrative, such as German explorer Ernst Schäfer and U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Rico Botta, about whom, oddly enough, the author says he could find little historical information.
A rip-roaring, if sometimes overly obscure, wartime tale.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73419-357-2
Page Count: 428
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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