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purva__g's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
swwords's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
juneorgwen's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
crystalstarrlight's review against another edition
2.0
The story starts with a young man approaching his grandparents and asking them to tell him a story of the days of Leningrad. So the grandfather does.
Lev Beniov lives in Leningrad during the Nazi siege. He is caught looting a German paratrooper and along with deserter, Kolya, are now tasked with finding a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter's wedding. The young men embark on this journey, eventually leaving Leningrad and heading beyond enemy lines.
This is one peculiar book. On the one hand, I really thought Benioff created excellent scenes, stunning imagery, painfully realistic events. On the other hand, I wanted to skip almost every conversation between Kolya and Lev. But to explain that, let me back up a bit.
Character-wise, I didn't find anything extraordinary. Lev is a 19 year old half-Jewish boy with an obscenely large nose (because he's Jewish, get it?) and an interest in chess. Kolya is a slightly older young man, interested in poetry, reading, and writing. Veeka is a female sniper. And there are other characters--but I couldn't name them to you even if my life depended on it. Beyond this rough characterization, I have no clue who these people are. Lev talks about his surroundings, but he seems oddly detached, as if nothing is truly affecting him--which is hard, because he is our viewpoint character, our narrator. He is the one telling the story. If our own narrator doesn't really care about what's happening, why should the reader? Kolya can't go a single conversation without twisting it to sex. And Veeka is every man's dream woman: cold as ice and able to use a sniper rifle (not that I deny the later; using a sniper rifle is, indeed, sexy).
Who are these people? What are their goals? How are they feeling? I feel hopelessly lost. I think back and can't remember a single moment where I felt intensely connected to the characters, where I ached with them or mourned with them. And there is a character close to Lev who dies. I didn't A) mourn the loss of the character or B) feel empathy with Lev over the loss of someone so close to him.
What really aggravated me is how almost all of the interactions between Kolya and Lev were about sex (or Kolya's inability to take a crap--good, GOD, that got old!!). I am not a guy, so I don't know much about "male bonding". Somehow I doubt that men spend almost every other conversation with another guy bragging about how many women they've had sex with, shaming the virgin for not having sex (Lev is a virgin, a horrible thing for a young man!), and lusting after some woman they just met and wanting to bed her. The latter really disgusted me; at one point, the young men enter the home of four women. They have been forced into prostitution. The way Kolya and Lev treat the women--as if they are dirty and vile for Germans repeatedly raping them just so they could stay alive--how they can only seem to concentrate on their tits, their inability to stand up for the women to others who view the women as dirty and vile, and how women are basically a set of sexual organs ready for their needs really made me mad. And then how Kolya's desertion story! He spends several pages telling how he deserted. Apparently, the guy canNOT go a few days without sex. He left his post to get laid, but that woman was dead. He tried to go to a ballerina's house to pork her, but her husband was home. And so then he sold all the remaining bread he had to a prostitute. What a guy!! Always thinking with his cock!!
I'm not saying that Kolya and Lev shouldn't have talked about sex. But I felt that 75% of their conversations were about sex. It's just nuts. It has nothing to do with the plot, nothing to do with character building, and nothing to do with deepening their relationship.
But in between these moments where I wanted to kill Kolya and Lev or tell them to shut up, Benioff would paint a picture of life in the 1940's in Leningrad. The search in Leningrad for the chicken. Finding out the chicken was a rooster (that was pretty funny!). The march out of the city to find eggs. Hearing the story of the poor Zoya who was punished for trying to leave German imprisonment. The chess game. Benioff is more than capable of crafting a scene, of painting an image.
One of the things I wasn't particularly looking forward to was its focus on World War II. I'm just not a fan of this era, and there are a ton of books out there that focus on characters in this period. But I thought this book had a bit of a twist: it wasn't all gloom and doom, about the horrors of war and the Nazi regime. Sure, we had plenty of that, but there was humor. The chicken-rooster fiasco. The German officer's confusion about the eggs. They imbued the novel with a bit of humor that kept it from being depressing and like every other WWII novel.
Probably the best aspect of this audiobook for me was the narrator, Ron Perlman. He has such a rich voice, and I thought he did the Russian accents fairly decently. It was easy to discern Lev from Kolya. I can't really recall any of his other voices (for the German officer or for Veeka), but I think it most important to make those two characters distinct. And even better, Perlman sings at one point. And you know what? He sounds pretty damn good!
I think your enjoyment of this novel will depend on a few things. Do you like WWII novels? Do you like a bit of black humor? Are you okay with many conversations centering around sex and reducing women to sex toys? If so, then I'm sure you'll enjoy this book, probably more than I did. Not saying that I hated the book, but I definitely won't be rereading it any time soon. Though I might check out more Benioff novels in the future.
Lev Beniov lives in Leningrad during the Nazi siege. He is caught looting a German paratrooper and along with deserter, Kolya, are now tasked with finding a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter's wedding. The young men embark on this journey, eventually leaving Leningrad and heading beyond enemy lines.
This is one peculiar book. On the one hand, I really thought Benioff created excellent scenes, stunning imagery, painfully realistic events. On the other hand, I wanted to skip almost every conversation between Kolya and Lev. But to explain that, let me back up a bit.
Character-wise, I didn't find anything extraordinary. Lev is a 19 year old half-Jewish boy with an obscenely large nose (because he's Jewish, get it?) and an interest in chess. Kolya is a slightly older young man, interested in poetry, reading, and writing. Veeka is a female sniper. And there are other characters--but I couldn't name them to you even if my life depended on it. Beyond this rough characterization, I have no clue who these people are. Lev talks about his surroundings, but he seems oddly detached, as if nothing is truly affecting him--which is hard, because he is our viewpoint character, our narrator. He is the one telling the story. If our own narrator doesn't really care about what's happening, why should the reader? Kolya can't go a single conversation without twisting it to sex. And Veeka is every man's dream woman: cold as ice and able to use a sniper rifle (not that I deny the later; using a sniper rifle is, indeed, sexy).
Who are these people? What are their goals? How are they feeling? I feel hopelessly lost. I think back and can't remember a single moment where I felt intensely connected to the characters, where I ached with them or mourned with them. And there is a character close to Lev who dies. I didn't A) mourn the loss of the character or B) feel empathy with Lev over the loss of someone so close to him.
What really aggravated me is how almost all of the interactions between Kolya and Lev were about sex (or Kolya's inability to take a crap--good, GOD, that got old!!). I am not a guy, so I don't know much about "male bonding". Somehow I doubt that men spend almost every other conversation with another guy bragging about how many women they've had sex with, shaming the virgin for not having sex (Lev is a virgin, a horrible thing for a young man!), and lusting after some woman they just met and wanting to bed her. The latter really disgusted me; at one point, the young men enter the home of four women. They have been forced into prostitution. The way Kolya and Lev treat the women--as if they are dirty and vile for Germans repeatedly raping them just so they could stay alive--how they can only seem to concentrate on their tits, their inability to stand up for the women to others who view the women as dirty and vile, and how women are basically a set of sexual organs ready for their needs really made me mad. And then how Kolya's desertion story! He spends several pages telling how he deserted. Apparently, the guy canNOT go a few days without sex. He left his post to get laid, but that woman was dead. He tried to go to a ballerina's house to pork her, but her husband was home. And so then he sold all the remaining bread he had to a prostitute. What a guy!! Always thinking with his cock!!
I'm not saying that Kolya and Lev shouldn't have talked about sex. But I felt that 75% of their conversations were about sex. It's just nuts. It has nothing to do with the plot, nothing to do with character building, and nothing to do with deepening their relationship.
But in between these moments where I wanted to kill Kolya and Lev or tell them to shut up, Benioff would paint a picture of life in the 1940's in Leningrad. The search in Leningrad for the chicken. Finding out the chicken was a rooster (that was pretty funny!). The march out of the city to find eggs. Hearing the story of the poor Zoya who was punished for trying to leave German imprisonment. The chess game. Benioff is more than capable of crafting a scene, of painting an image.
One of the things I wasn't particularly looking forward to was its focus on World War II. I'm just not a fan of this era, and there are a ton of books out there that focus on characters in this period. But I thought this book had a bit of a twist: it wasn't all gloom and doom, about the horrors of war and the Nazi regime. Sure, we had plenty of that, but there was humor. The chicken-rooster fiasco. The German officer's confusion about the eggs. They imbued the novel with a bit of humor that kept it from being depressing and like every other WWII novel.
Probably the best aspect of this audiobook for me was the narrator, Ron Perlman. He has such a rich voice, and I thought he did the Russian accents fairly decently. It was easy to discern Lev from Kolya. I can't really recall any of his other voices (for the German officer or for Veeka), but I think it most important to make those two characters distinct. And even better, Perlman sings at one point. And you know what? He sounds pretty damn good!
I think your enjoyment of this novel will depend on a few things. Do you like WWII novels? Do you like a bit of black humor? Are you okay with many conversations centering around sex and reducing women to sex toys? If so, then I'm sure you'll enjoy this book, probably more than I did. Not saying that I hated the book, but I definitely won't be rereading it any time soon. Though I might check out more Benioff novels in the future.
niarastitt's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
3.5
jambi3's review against another edition
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
dukesilver's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
4.5
errski's review against another edition
4.0
I really liked it. Engaging story and I really liked the characters.
mbpartlow's review against another edition
5.0
Best WW II book I've read in a long time. Excellent writing. A pace that won't let you go. Wow.
zozosbooks's review against another edition
4.0
I really like the characters in this and how they compliment each other and the insight into the humility of the main character as a young man in a crazy war. I like it because while the adventures we’re good, it does feel more like it was about the people they met along the way and how they changed each others lives! Cool. Only took away one star because I often found my mind drifting off while reading but also I don’t think that’s the books fault hehe.