I requested this book from NetGalley as an ARC as I was first attracted to this by the cover. It features a young man in a soldier's uniform with a Ukrainian flag patch on his arm; he's accompanied by a young woman in a vyshyvanka. I am someone who will gladly read anything about Ukraine so was intrigued by this book - primarily on the strength of the front cover alone.
The description further cemented things. It focusses on a US special forces soldier by the name of John Kovalenko. He's of Ukrainian descent (as you can tell by the surname. Although he's from the US himself, as soon as he heard about the horrific war in Ukraine decided to join the Foreign Legion there and fight alongside the Ukrainians. Good for him.
This story starts off with John in a submersible off the coast of Crimea. He attains the shore and meets up with a Tatari partisan by the name of Mustafa. Together they make their way to the partisan camp where John is then introduced to the rest of his team that he'll be working with. Together, they are gong to blow a Russian missile warehouse wide open, utilising FPV drones. These are very small drones by the way, not the whacking great things that are often depicted that are the size of gliders.
A lot of the partisans are Tatari - which are of course the indigenous people of Crimea. They are fighting for their homeland
So far so true to life which is a good thing by the way.
John falls in love with a Tatari woman by the name of Yasmina. The only trouble is she has anther Tatari suitor by the name of Mohammed. The important thing to point out here though is that Yasmina has no interest in Mohammed but she does have an immediate attraction to John. Mohammed by the way is a royal pain in the behind. He is possessive, jealous, manipulative and is not above truing to usurp John's authority and past experience in combat in such warzones as Iraq and Afghanistan.
It serves the reader well to pay attention to Mohammed as he delivers a crucial turning point in the plot later on. I won't say what that turning point is as that would ruin the plot for potential future readers.
I won't reveal how the overall mission panned out as that would also ruin the readers experience of his book. All I can say is that it is worth a read.
It is of course a very topical story given what is still going on in Ukraine at the moment. It's also a very well researched book too. I knew a lot of the information included in this book - I'm not trying to flex by stating that but I have read a lot about Ukraine since Putin's alleged 'special military operation' began. It is nice to know that the author has done his research before he wrote this book and it shows in spades. There were some points that I learned from this book - namely about the Crimean Tatars. It was an interesting and enriching experience to learn more,
There are also mentions of real life people here - as well as the main characters being of course entirely fictional. These people include of course certain Vladimir V Putin and the much more preferable Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (by the way, I am a supporter of Zelenskyy.) There are also mentions of Petro Poroshenko and Yevgeny Prigozhin as well.
The romance story while a part of the overarching whole of the plot is not the main thrust of it, It is cute addition and I mean that in a really respectful manner. I ma aro-ace and not really that bothered by romance in stories but I thought that this was a nice and wholesome aspect to the this story and enriched the experience. Also there are adult scenes or references to the same but these are not explicit - definitely not enough to annoy an aro-ace person!
There was a lot of action scenes here and I greatly appreciated the military k now-how here. I m a military nerd anyway and am very interested in military intelligence/special ops things. That is another reason why I wanted to read this particular book. I also greatly was appreciative of all the military gear on display here too.
Please be aware though that this book does end on a cliff-hanger and as such has an open ended ending. Which is a bit of a bugger because I want to know what happens to these characters now!
That's something else that I would like to point out too. You do grow to love these characters and care about them. You want them to survive, thrive and win out. Of course you do. (except for Mohammed.) There is one character here = Sasha or Oleksandr - that I really liked. He was my favourite character here.... and SPOLIER ALERT Sasha died. I was gutted by that. It's not often a book gets to me in such a manner but that one did.
All in all, I did thoroughly enjoy this book and it was a quick read. I don't mean that as a complaint, by the way. It just means that I was enjoying it that much that I zipped through the book.