Reviews and Comments

Two more comments: For some reason, the enemy boat has no name. Not sure what that is about. Maybe so we don’t sympathize with the Russian crew who didn’t really do much wrong and who just get killed in the end Also, the trip of the British submarine through the Turkish straits: That couldn’t have happened. And i mean the trip into the Black Sea. I read the Montreux Convention, something that the author probably didn’t do. (Maybe he just hoped that the readers wouldn’t.) Submarines are only allowed to cross the straits in two cases: Newly bought boats by Black Sea countries going there, or boats of Black Sea countries going to and from a repair shipyard outside the Black Sea. British submarines are simply not allowed through the straits at all, in any direction and state of submersion.

OK, now i am really nitpicking. I ges an authors note could have been enough, but. But i wonder, why the Russian is using »Kilo« in his inner monologue when thinking about either a Project 877/Paltus/Halibut or a Project 636/Varshavyanka¹ submarine.

1) Whirlwinds of danger are raging around us, Overwhelming forces of darkness assail, Still in the fight see advancing before us, A red flag of liberty that yet shall prevail.

Ah, so. Gefahr, ein Buch in zwei Sprachen parallel zu lesen. Im Original haben die U-Boot-Fahrer von Anfang an Namen, Ben und Gregory unterhalten sich. Auf Deutsch nicht. Das musste ich nochmal nachschlagen. Weil halt der eine Hauptverdächtige Ben heißt. So kriegen die unterschiedlichen Leser unterschiedlich viele Informationen.

Wenn es aber die Iraner und Iraker nicht waren, wieso stehen dann US- und andere Nato-Kapitäne nicht unter Verdacht? Sicher, Verrat, aber irgendwer war es. Zwietracht und Misstrauen sind so schnell geschürt, aber wenn ich was zu sagen hätte, müssten die zwei U-Boote der CVBG mal schön alle ihre Nuklear-Torpedos vorzeigen, ob sie nicht eins »verloren« hätten. Dann alle anderen USN-U-Boote. Muss man überlegt und vorsichtig machen. Einerseits die unschuldigen Kapitäne nicht entehren, andererseits darauf achten, dass falls doch einer ein Verräter ist, er nicht noch mehr Schiffe in die Luft sprengen kann.

OK, i have complained about the physics and the world building. What really led me to deduct stars was the miscarriage story. What we get in Chapter 5 is »“Where I came from . . . when you’re born, the doctor says you’re a boy or a girl, depending on, well, your bits. (...) That’s . . . not how you do it in Fevara?” I asked. “Gods no! How’s a baby supposed to know if it’s a boy or a girl? How would it know if it’s both or neither? That’s arrogance on a level I’ve never heard before.”« Well. That’s why we read this. That’s what the »postman« and »goddess« of the title are all about.

And then we get chapter 11. »a beautiful baby boy on the way.« »“My boy. Is he okay?”«. Four more »boy«s. That child wasn’t even born yet. I don’t know how Juno knew about the child’s »bits«. Using gendered language in this book is something i really did not enjoy. At all.

I didn’t really like the world building of this. I get it. It is fiction. Still, it seems very much like 21st century North America with electricity and modern communications removed. Take cars. They have been replaced by carts and wagons in ways that seem odd to me. »“Some drunkard crashed his cart into a merchant's stand,”«. How does that work? Was the horse drunk, too? He was in the city. What was he doing with a cart when he was going to a tavern?

Lots of other details that seem really odd. Do they have a large industrial manufacturing base? Seems like it, the way they waste resources. One time a cake gets squished, and instead of taking home the rests of the squished cake, it gets thrown into a public trash bin. That, too, seemed out of place to me. Trash bins were invented in the late 19th century, public ones even later.

I may ignore the banana from the world-building stand point. The author wanted something for a guy to slip no. Tea would have worked, as we have learned from Hunt for Red October, but it’s fine. The physics of that scene, tho. No. The other world our bunny finds herself in doesn’t seem to conserve momentum. What happens is that one guy jumps into a room thru a window. He steps on a banana peel. So there is no friction to brake his forward momentum. But instead of sliding forward, he is accelerated backwards by banana magic and falls out the window he jumped in thru. You need a bit of banana magic to lift him up over the windowsill, too,