Reviews and Comments

So, yeah. When you are a GDR border guard who as actually found a Western agent, or when you are a NVA pilot defending his home country against the same agents, you get killed off by the author. One of them just plainly murdered, the other driven into an air crash. But when you are a literal Nazi who murdered Jews with the Einsatzgruppen, you get to escape, with a promise of no prosecution in the West. Bah. The protagonist is a war criminal, too, but he killed for Britain.

The rest of the plot: OK, it was entertaining. But silly. Basically all the details are off, as i wrote in my quotes and comments.

Somehow we are to believe that Mr Vaughn fell in love with Ms Campbell. That was done so perfunctory that i totally missed that plot point when it was first made. But Higgins needed something to motivate Vaughn, and apparently couldn’t come up with anything believable.

Yeah, well, not surprising, but the aviation bits are all over the place, too. Starting from Higgins calling runway lights landing lights. Nope, landing lights are on the airplane. Then the (Fieseler) Storch is running at »160 miles an hour«. That’s much too fast. The top speed of the Storch is 48 m/s, not the 72 m/s given. We never really learn whether the »MiG« is a MiG 17 or 21. It could be either, and it is sort-of important. The landing speed of a MiG 17 is close to the top speed of the Storch. The MiG 21s is much higher. So, a MiG 17 would have it much easier to follow the Storch.

Then they are told over radio (Why wasn’t he monitoring 121.5 MHz anyway?) to go to »Allersberg«, heading 340°. What? The good news is that Higgins has put Allersberg and Bitterfeld on different sides of the inner German border. The bad news is that he now has two towns on the wrong side. And the real Allersberg is in Bavaria, far away from where everybody is. Also, a heading (or course) of 340 is pretty much north-northwest. There isn’t much GDR left in that direction.

What would have been hilarious and, as i learned recently, realistic, if the MiG pilot would have been blasting away with his cannon and just not scoring any hits. Apparently Soviet pilots at least were quite often lousy shots.

Some more nits: Hard to say how it was in 1963, but i don’t think that there were that many Catholics in the Altmark then. Now, with decades of religious freedom, there are about 3 % Catholics and 10 % Protestants. But no, in the book pretty much everyone is a crypto-Catholic.

Apart from the monks. They are Anglicans. For no reason whatsoever. Yeah, sure.

Also »Cross of St. Michael«. Huh? The archangel? A big, heavy, wooden crucifix is the Cross of St.Michael? Sometimes Michael is shown with a cross of some sort: A slim lance, great to skewer the devil-dragon, with a crossbar. That kind of cross definitely has no Jesus hanging on it.

Lots and lots of details are just a bit off. Not just the West German Bitterfeld. The region of Germany where the book is set is just north, and east of Stendal. That actually is the Altmark. In the book it is called »Holstein Heath«. Yeah, no. Holstein is quite a bit away from there. Then there are a bunch of Catholics, and none of them seems at all concerned with the late pope. One even compares himself to »the« pope. Who? The dead guy? You don’t have a pope at the moment.

Also, the author puts a man named Nonecker in the Altmark. That is possible, but it rather looks like author thought that that was a typical East German name. It is not. Honecker was from the Saarland, and his name is more common in the west and south.

Speaking of names: Guy works for the big bad, name starts with Be, something something, a k sound, I kept confusing Comrades Berg and Becker.

Meh. I had a bit of hope for this, but the MacGuffin was immediately treated as a MacGuffin. What is it? The realization that climate change is real and that we have to decarbonize immediately and radically. The GDR government is suppressing the results, and so the hero has to help the scientists editor to escape to the USA, because the scientists there are Free with a capital F there.

But riffling thru the thing, no, the novel is not spending at least half the text about how US scientist knew about climate change, but many were bought by oil companies and suppressed and downplayed the danger.

Eh, could have put it in the main review. Anyway.

This book is set in the present, 2016, and we even get a one line mention of the short-fingered vulgarian as a politician. Still, this does not read like 2016. Main point is the central idea that media can’t be copied. There is a ton of talks about destroying video-DVDs, and not a single mention of maybe having dumped the raw video to a computer. Does that even work? Are there cameras that record directly to DVDs? I ges you could hook them up to some DVD-recorder. At some point the »discs« are even called tapes. Even VHS tapes could be copied by rather inexperienced folks.

Nowhere on the cover or inside the book does it say that this is part of a series. Nothing to keep you from picking this up on its own. No »Book 2 in the Promise Falls series«.

It just starts in the middle of some half dozen convoluted stories with tons and tons of characters you are supposed to be familiar with, they go around raping and murdering and being nasty to each other in not quite that evil ways for a while, a few new characters (i presume) are introduced, and we leave the story just as much in the middle of it like we came in.

The point i had the most problems with, story wise, is that there wasn’t as clear of a distinction between consensual orgies and gang rapes. Basically »Oh, no! What happens when news of our orgies come out?« »Orgies? You worry about orgies? You roofied and raped women!« »Yeah, if news of that got out, it would be a little bit worse.«

I also didn’t like how Crystal was described in general.

Pretty much the only adult who wasn’t an arsehole was that one lady who wanted to leave the town even before she could sell her house.

Writing-wise there was a lot of padding. And that about a quarter is written in first person and the rest in third is baffling. It isn’t to get better action scenes. One of the big ones isn't first person, and the one that is is just confusing.

Plot Twist! Ok, i did not expect the bit at the end of chapter 36. Then again, thinking about it, the great plot twist ... doesn’t really change much. That must be a talent of its own, inventing a plot twist, that is than rolled out for more than one whole other chapter, only to not really change the story at all.

This just looks ugly to me. The font, that is. Using Caslon was a great idea. Very fitting. The Declaration of Independence, that is, the Dunlap broadsheet, was set in it, so a book about that area: great font choice. But. Bringhurst has this to say on Caslon: »(...) His work is the typographic epitome of the English Baroque(.) (...) Caslon was the first great English typecutter, and in the English speaking world his type has long possessed the semi-legendary, unexciting status of the pipe and slippers, good used car and favorite chair.« So. High praise for a font. But the text goes on: »(M)any of the faces sold as Caslon now are merely parodies.« Yeah. Like ITC Caslon. This book is set in ITC Caslon, and i think it is just ugly. Some of it, like the inconsistent contrast, may be because this is print on demand. Some of it, like the f, the g and the T, wouldn’t be much better if set in metal.

Again outdated biology. Significant parts were outdated when Sawyer wrote this. Like the whole bit with »there is no fusion site, the telomeres from gene 2 and 3 (should have been 12 and 13) completely disappeared« was known to be wrong for over ten years by then. There are basically two telomeres stuck together in the middle of chromosome 2. That is how we know it was a fusion, and have known since 1991.

The end was very rushed, narratively. What to do with the personal villain? Have him commit suicide. Elaborate what it means that only women but not men can move to the parallel world? Eh, not worth more than about a page of text. What to do with the whole god organ? Have everyone have a vision at the same time, but I’m out of paper, so I can’t do anything with this.

And one more thing for the whole trilogy: The thing is very gender essentialist. Men this, women that. Men have XY chromosomes, women XX. Men are hunters, women gatherers. Oh, yeah. Literal mammoth hunters. Looking at real hunter gatherer societies, it is never that strict. Even here we have one woman hunter, but she’s a literal outlaw, in the »not protected (!) by law« sense.

Again, you can read this without thinking too much about it, and than it is an OK book.