Customer Reviews

Return of the Eagles

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I chose this book expecting a wartime thriller, instead I got some sort of wartime soap opera - and not in a good way.

The book starts tensely enough with a German V2 rocket scientist assuming the identity of a German soldier to escape the murderous attention of the SS. He keeps the identity when captured by the British afraid of what might happen to him.

The book then descends into the story of German POWs and their relationships with their captors, nurses and civilians. It is pleasant enough and amusing at times, but no thriller. A big problem with the book is that the main character on the Allies side is Ian Fleming, future creator of James Bond. Whenever he is on the page you are spotting cryptic references to his (future) James Bond books. This is very distracting and has no relevance to the plot (such as it is).

Fleming's character, like the story, fizzles out in the last quarter of the book. You expect it to get tense again as the scientist's false identity is exposed, but it doesn't. Instead the story stumbles to an end very unsatisfactorily.

I borrowed the audio CD version from the library. It is certainly not worth buying.

This book was a good read. It kept my attention through out and I am looking for ward to the other books in this series

James Follett's writing kept me absorbed in this, the last book of the Trilogy, set in a non-Nazi POW Camp in the Lake District.
His knowledge of the area coupled with the characters, some of which run through all three novels, combine to make this a very enjoyable read and I would recommend the book to anyone who enjoys a good, light read.

See my review of "Cage of Eagles". A good ending to the series of Grizdale Hall POW stories. Author Follett certainly does his research.