I'm sure that the narrator's voice matches the tone of the author's voice just great, but gosh was it monotonous to listen to! I went back and read a print version and loved the story. The audio just didn't work for me.

I first read Andrew Krivak in 2017, when The Signal Flame was published. His glorious prose is something few authors can match. Here we have another novel involving many of the same characters and to an extent, the same setting. I am happy to get back to it.

My thanks go to NetGalley, Highbridge Audio, and Bellevue Literary Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

One of the things that initially drew me to Krivak’s writing is that he occupies a sparsely populated niche with his historical fiction. Who else writes about the Romani Resistance of World War II? Who writes about Romani refugees? Most authors are as susceptible as anyone else to trend following and bandwagonism. Krivak is not. He sets his own course, and he does it with spellbinding prose and sterling self-discipline.

Here we see three generations of men that go to war, starting with World War II, then to a P.O.W. camp during the Vietnam War, and finally, to Iraq. This is a rough read, friends. There’s just about every possible trigger, so if you’re protecting the more tender parts of your mind, you may need to pass on this one. On the other hand, if you are looking for a catharsis to bring about a good ugly cry, rush out and get this book right this minute.

Krivak doesn’t write page turners; instead, he draws me in and makes me forget where I am and what I was doing a minute ago. His work is deeply absorbing and at times, moving.

Narrator Jamie Renell gives a flawless performance here. The book is tightly plotted enough, however, that the listener needs to pay careful attention. I had both the audio and ebook formats, and I still got confused once in awhile and had to backtrack.

If I could add one more thing to ice Krivak’s literary cake, it would be a well developed female character. The women that appear here seem to have been planted for the purpose of developing the male characters. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and Krivak has crafted this story around a set of actual people and events, though he says it’s a loose representation, and so I can see why he chooses to focus on the men that go to war; yet, since he is taking a few liberties anyway, would it hurt so very much to send off a soldier girl?

This complaint is a minor one. Krivak is a badass, and I do recommend this book to you.

It was written in a very poetic almost philosophical fashion. The generational threads for each character were interesting and thought provoking. I appreciated the way each son had to find his own way and battled with his past or what he went thru.

The writing style was a little difficult to follow - both with the ambiguity at times and how the timeline and characters kept weaving in and out and overlapping.

Possibly if I’d read the others in the series this would make more sense but each chapter and focus shift it would take me awhile to figure out what we were talking about or whom.

It was a good book but not my favorite style of narrative.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this audiobook. All opinions are mine.

I received an advance copy of this book from Bellevue Literary Press via Net Galley Nov. 2022. While I rarely “read” a book anymore, I read the first few pages and thought it looked good. With the intention of reading it later, haha, April 2024 I saw it was available as an audio book on Net Galley from RB Media. I do the majority of my reading with audio books. So I thank both opportunities to read this book because I needed the eBook when the narration became confusing.

I think my first mistake was not reading the previous 2 books in the trilogy. The inequity between character descriptions and storylines was frustrating. However, I do stand by my rating because the author’s writing style was underwhelming. If you have ever read a Fredrik Backman book, you know he creates pieces of a quilt and sews them together as the story unfolds, leaving a beautiful piece of art. However, the opaqueness and foreshadowing of this storyline did not seem to come together in the end. There was a lot of jumping around and past events or information thrown in randomly.

As for the narration, not good. The way he read the book made it hard to decipher at times who was speaking or what character was presented. Things just ran together. I often had to revert to the eBook to identify what the heck was happening.

I’m not sure I will ever read the other two books in the trilogy, at this point, meh.

For those dedicated readers of this author, no disrespect intended, it was just not for me.

Sorry to say that this was a DNF for me.
I believe it is my first one ever. =0
Sad, as I have family in PA, and have been to Wilkes-Barre and surrounding areas many times over the years...so I was so looking forward to this one...

Although the premise of the story seemed solid, it just did not hold my attention...and it jumped around a l o t !!

And each time, you are in another war with different players. Very hard to keep up.

Additionally, I had the audiobook, and as someone else mentioned in their review, I felt like someone was reading a textbook to me. So, that definitely did not help at all...

Also, I've come to realize that this is book #3, but it is the first one I've read...so that may also have something to do with it, and if that's the case, that's totally on me!

Thanks to #NetGalley and #HighBridgeAudio for an ARC of this audiobook which was released yesterday, 5/7/24. in exchange for an honest review.

Like The Appearance of Horses by Andrew Krivak.

2 ⭐️⭐️ for me.

In this sweeping family novel, the reader is introduced to the impacts and realities of sending the men to war, as each generation at least one male fights, most are called heroes even when they return to put the pieces of their lives back together, if they are even able to come home. Krivak layers the experience of soldiers in the country with attempts to reintegrate if they are able to come home, and to the layers of experience faced by immigrants (Roma identity plays a large role in this work).

While the action centers on the male family members, Krivak uses the female characters as the anchors of the story, especially the family matriarch who the book ends with. A woman who is connected to war in every generation of her family: the daughter of a WW1 vet, married to WW2 vet, Mother of Vietnam vet, and grandmother to an Afghanistan vet.

The writing is vivid and detailed, with seams and themes that flow through like subtle waves, moving back and forth through time as we see the return and then the in-country experience of this family.

The story was boring and did too many time jumps leaving me confused for the first few minutes of so many chapters. The character building was rushed or nonexistent and I could not have cared less what happened to any of them. The narration sounded like a text book being read. Jamie Renell has a pleasant voice but it was definitely hard to stay awake through most of this. I ended up speeding it up to 1.75x (usually listen at 1.5x) just to get through it.

Also, where are the horses? There were some mentioned in passing but the title ends up not really making any sense.

I felt like the writing was well done, but it is not my kind of book felt like somebody was reading a textbook to me. I did this by advanced listener copy through NetGalley thank you for that just not my type of book. It may have been better if I had it in a paperback or e-book.