Clerah Jai

I’m currently engrossed in Special Forces, the epic tale of Vadim Petrovich Krasnorada and Dan McFadyen from a series of novels by Aleksandr Voinov and Marquesate. It is long. It is not for the faint of heart and I am loving it. I’ve had my nose in this since last week and my interest has yet to flag. The story is pretty simple, SAS Dan meets Soviet spetsnaz Vadim under less than ideal circumstances during the Soviet Unions war in Afghanistan, which leaves Dan with a great deal of hatred towards Vadim. They meet again in the Afghan mountains and begin to form a bond of sorts.

While I feel the book does rely on you quite willingly suspending your disbelief to a certain degree, it’s easy to sit back and be taken in by the world building, characters and tension between the two men. There are also elements that some readers might find difficult, like rape, torture and rather vivid war and fighting scenes. AND dear lord, at times it is like the book that never ends… it goes on and on… I liked it much though, errors and all. PLUS it’s free in ebook form and also availble via Lulu in PB for a small fee.

Special Forces is the 1st book in the series and there are four books in total, comprising of over 1 million words and over 70 chapters. O-o You can check out the books here on either authors website, but be aware there seem to be some differences with editions and authors published work. I suggest checking out both sites before buying or downloading ebooks.
Review here
http://sharrow.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/shorts-18/… (meer)

I put this book down a number of times, mainly because I didn't want to read one more page about how Dan hates and dates. (How fucked up does a guy have to be to find his first shreds of humanity four years into the Russian occupation of Afghanistan?) It's an interesting exploration of character, motivation and ethics in a closed-off, lab-like setting, but structurally and stylistically I have way too many issues here, so I'm not going to star rate this -- I wouldn't do it any favors. I guess I stayed with the story to figure out what the hype was about. It started to turn around for me on page 300something, and the last quarter was compelling enough to make me pick up the second part.… (meer)