Killing Rommel: A Novel
by Steven Pressfield
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Book Summary Information
Author: Steven PressfieldEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-06-02
ISBN: 0767926161
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of Killing Rommel: A Novel
Book Review: A novel about machines and equiptment
Summary: 2 Stars
Underwhelmed by "The Afghan Campaign", I thought that in "Killing Rommel" Pressfield had found his voice as a novelist. The early part of the book about the growing bond between Chapman and Stein and the approaching conflict felt like a novel: take some characters, give them strengths and weaknesses, endear the reader to them, and then put them in trying situations and see what they do.
But in this book, that was just early days and the good stuff ends before the real "story" begins. Pressfield has not written a novel about people, he's written one about machines and equipment first, tactics second, and people a distant third. Cardboard men are introduced for no purpose other than to experience virtually random acts of carnage. Some of them survive some of them don't, but who cares?
And the writing is not inspired either. Things happen "Suddenly" or "Miraculously" don't happen. Voices "crackle" over radios - or maybe not so much voices as clichés. After starting the book I checked out the Wikipedia entry on Rommel (from which I learned more than Pressfield's novel): an Honorable Warrior, an interesting man to be in the service of Hitler. Therefore it was not hard to foresee the storybook ending.
One assumes all the LRDG stuff is carefully researched and true, so you may like to read this book to find out about that - it is less dry (one imagines) than slogging through technical reports, but a good history can be much more captivating than a historical novel. There must be one done on this subject somewhere.
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