Customer Reviews

BLOOD OATH

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

While David Morrell is one of my favorite authors, I can not in good conscience recommend this particular submission. Blood Oath lacks several things, not the least of which is substance. You can not develop a liking to the whiny, pitiful, under-developed protagonist; Peter Houston. If this is your first read by Morrell, please don't judge him on this work. Try "The Brotherhood of the Rose", or " The Fraternity of the Stone", or "The Fifth Profession" to get a glimpse of what this wonderful author is truly capable of.

Morrell is my favorite outhor and he thrilled me again with this book. I didnt want to put it down and have read it over several times.

Imagine if your father died in the war and you went to France to see his grave and he wasn't burried there?
This is what happens to Peter Houston. He never knew his father who had died in WWII and now that Peter's mother has died, Peter and his wife Jan travel to France to visit Peter's father's grave and tell him about his wife's death.

However, at the military cemetary they find that Peter's father is not listed there or in the two closest military cemetaries. The military authorities explain that this is most unusual but it has happened two other times.

Now all Peter has is the info that a Pierre de St. Laurent had written saying that he promised to look after his father's grave. However, St. Laurent is also missing.

Peter is told that he might find the missing man in another town and when traveling there a van forces his car off the road into a river. Peter survives but Jan doesn't.

When he awakens, Peter is back at the hotel he was staying at. The owner and his daughter Simone, said Peter could stay there and recover.

Peter is that much more resolved that, improbably, he has his wife cremated and goes with Simone to the town where he expected to find the missing man. However, this doesn't work either. Without revealing plot.

Peter and Simone are attempting to find answers for Peter's father's disappearence and that of the two missing service men.

Morrell is a master at maintaing suspense and he does so here. He weaves the plot around incidents that happened in WWII and what has become of the people in those incidents. Written in 1982 it gives an interesting, if improbable story.

Mild recommendation. Note the book is also interesting when the reader compares it to Morrell's later writing and sees his professional development.

This was the 1st of many Morrell books that I have read. This book made me want to read his other works such as Desperate Measures and I am currently reading First Blood. In this book you don't want to miss a thing and you are alwasys thinking. Morrell is great at making the hunter become the hunted. You can feel for Houston. He was told his whole life by his mother about his great war hero father and when he goes to pay his respects to his father people are trying to kill him and succeed in killing his wife. This is a book I would recomend to anyone.

David Morrell's later works are usually tension-filled thrillers that feature bad guys pursuing the good guys while the good guys try to thwart the nefarious plot of the evildoers.

This one had all of those elements but Morrell's writing style is not quite perfected in this early novel. Sometimes he had me, other times...no.

I would seriously recommend just about any other Morrell book that came after this one before reading this one.

Final grade: C+.

As a long-time Morrell fan, I can tell you there are much better Morrell books out there. The book is short, so if you want a quick read, it may help you pass a few hours, but I recommend trying out First Blood, Testament or Last Reveille first.

Although this book is a little shorter than his usual writings,
I think it is another great representation of how awesome an author David Morrell is.
His thrillers have been great through the end and this one
is no exception. Peter Houston, looking for his father's grave, finds
hidden secrets that are revealed throughout the book. Make sure you read this
outstanding book from the great thriller writer we have all
grown to love, David Morrell.

Blood Oath drags on a bit for the first quarter of the book before anything exciting at all happens. If this hadn't been written by Morrell, I would have given up on it before getting to the good stuff. Basically in the first part we follow a frustrated guy who is trying to find his father's World War II grave but discovers no one else thinks it exists. He then explores a small French town to find a man who wrote his mother a letter saying he is tending his father's grave. If you keep reading past these pretty boring pages the excitement levels do rise slightly when it becomes apparent someone isn't impressed that Peter Houston and his wife are sticking their noses where they don't belong. A van forces them over a cliff and into a river. Peter's wife dies, he swears to get the truth no matter what the dangers. The hotel where he's staying owner's daughter accompanies him on this journey where attempt after attempt will be made to silence Houston and stop the search for the truth.

You've sort of got to push yourself to keep turning the pages with this one. Usually with David Morrell novels, you don't want to stop reading until you've reached the final pages. None are the characters are written well enough that you care one way or the other what happens to them. Plus at one stage after constantly referring to the main character as Houston he starts to be referred to as Pete. At first I was wondering who Pete was until I checked the cover to see what Houston's first name was. A lot of what happens is pretty unrealistic too. Blood Oath also like a James Bond movie has the lets outline our whole plan before we kill you speech factor and a lot of that plan is fairly predictable. I did like the final page chapter, although I can see that some readers won't.

Being this book is pretty rare and expensive to come across I'd give it a miss unless it is ever republished or you can find it in your local library.

David Morrell writes some truly excellent action/thriller novels. I have always found his work difficult to put down, just as this one was. However, this book had one of the lamest endings that he has ever contrived. It just left me unsatisfied, as the main bad guy just kind of dies in a random fashion while running around in his cheesy vampire outfit. It just was not up to par with what I expect from Morrell

I read this, wanting to love it. While I will check out more of David Morrell, I didn't look at this as a novel of survival, but of hell on wheels revenge, and with no consequences. The setting in France was awesome. Takes you to a different place in the world. I thought it was a good attempt of a "kill or be killed" kind of book, but after awhile, I just didn't see it in that light at all.

So, in closing I can say that I'll give Morrell another shot. I loved the Rambo movies and would love the chance to read "First Blood" or something that will stick out so I can further read his material. In saying that, the Rambo movies were also movies motivated by revenge, but it wasn't the point Morrell was trying to get across.

It was hard for me to give this only 3 stars. But as a man who makes up his mind and sticks to his guns, that's all I can give it. Maybe next time.