03-01-2007, 03:58 AM
With 10" of snow being dumped on us last week end was a good time to read this book.
I was pleasantly surprised as most "historical" fiction leaves me somewhat unfulfilled. Kind of like eating biscuits with no cheese.
You could almost feel the cold and the tinge of fear in the soldiers as they stood in the snow watching the river freeze.
The last part was perhaps not as intense as say Cornwall's battle narratives.
But the smell of burning wagons ,palisades and the yells and screams of men fighting hand to hand protecting a crumbling frontier were always in the back of my mind.
Robert made a good point. It was very much like some of the first hand stories I have read about winter in the trenches on the Somme and the Ypres salient.
On the whole I am glad I got the chance to read this book and it will find a place on one of my bookshelves to be read again.
Jon Ractliffe.
I was pleasantly surprised as most "historical" fiction leaves me somewhat unfulfilled. Kind of like eating biscuits with no cheese.
You could almost feel the cold and the tinge of fear in the soldiers as they stood in the snow watching the river freeze.
The last part was perhaps not as intense as say Cornwall's battle narratives.
But the smell of burning wagons ,palisades and the yells and screams of men fighting hand to hand protecting a crumbling frontier were always in the back of my mind.
Robert made a good point. It was very much like some of the first hand stories I have read about winter in the trenches on the Somme and the Ypres salient.
On the whole I am glad I got the chance to read this book and it will find a place on one of my bookshelves to be read again.
Jon Ractliffe.
There are no real truths, just stories. (Zuni)
