Customer Reviews

The Desert Peach #26: Miki

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throughout the desert peach, donna barr has explored the human side of the german army during world war ii. with this issue, members of the 469th are found struggling to surivive in a ravaged germany. accompanied by a war refugee, the main characters (udo schmidt and kjars winzig) encounter the ss, concentration camp detainees, and the us army. never the best of friends, these men find themselves depending upon each other to survive these encounters without losing their humanity.

Lovely. Simply lovely. Already a very complex character, Kjars grows a soul and maybe even develops a smidgin of conscience. Time has passed since those wild days in the desert, regaling the Peach band with twisted passages of Mein Kampf. Kjars is no longer the dedicated brownshirt he once was-the War and the Party itself have pretty well beaten that out of him. Now he's stuck leading a rag tag band of Army soldiers through what is left of Germany. He's poorly suited to leadership and no one is more ready to remind him of that than Udo Schmidt, the one constant who has stuck with Kjars through every infuriating moment of the War. The challenge ahead for Kjars is trying to avoid the enemy (the Americans) and keep away from not-so-friendly "friends" (the SS.)

The art is stark and darkly contrasted. Donna Barr expertly paints the mood of paranoia and bitter longing as she asks the difficult question, "If you had lost everything you ever believed in, could you still do the right thing?" Kjars doesn't have anything more to give and when the order comes down to execute civilian prisoners, he's got very little reason to resist...

Donna Barr outdoes herself with Miki. Read it read it read it. Even if you've never read any other Desert Peach books, Miki is a fascinating, rewarding journey into the human heart. War brings out the worst in most, but for once, it brings out the best in Kjars.