Customer Reviews

The Flight of the Stork

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The story starts with Louis Antioch's journey following the migration patterns of European storks. This task has been given to him by Max Bohm, who is found dead at the very start of the book. Soon this quest proves to be mysterious and very, very dangerous. One of the delights of the book is the descriptions of the various locales -- Switzerland, Slovania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Israel, Central African Republic and finally Calcutta. This descriptions show either very good research or personal knowledge. One warning is necessary for readers, at times, the book is quite gory, but never gratuitously so. When I read the book I immediately noticed the concise, rather chopping style that reminded me first of Hemingway, but then, of Camus. This should not be a surprising since Grange is French. Considering that this is Grange's first novel published in English, I am very impressed.

I "met" this book one afternoon of some years ago. It was a paperback, very cheap. I thought:'it could be good to spend some days'.
From that day, i red all Grange' books, one after one other. It had been a fever and it still is .
This book is amazing. There's nothing in common with other thriller writers.
To read Grange' stories it like to go deep and deeper in a terrific journey, where people aren't what they look like and you are looking more than the solution of an enigma, but for the enigma inside yourself and that you can't watch because it scares you.

Buy them all and have fun. Grange' is the number one in Europe and reading just one of his books you will understand why.

Best regards
G.N.

I really enjoyed reading this book.
The first 100 pages or so are in my opinion a little slow to get into but once you are over that it really does turn into a Page turner! What was a little odd at first were the two plotlines, storks and transplants. It is all coming together nicely towards the middle of the book.
I have become a fan of Mr. Grange and am working my way through the Empire of the Wolves right now!

Perpetual student, Louis Antioch, makes his move into the real-world by accepting a job with ornithologist Max Bohm, whereby he is to follow a flock of storks on there migratory path in order to determine why so many of them went missing the previous year. However, when Bohm is murdered before Antioch can even begin his job, Antioch instead teams up with a police detective to determine why Bohm was killed and what dark secrets are hidden in his mysterious past.

Jean-Christophe Grange's first novel, "The Flight of the Storks", might not be as good as his subsequent novels, "Blood-Red Rivers" and "The Empire of the Wolves", but it is still a pretty good, albeit ridiculously far-fetched, story. The story initially appears to be a rip-off of "Coma" and I thought that I could see every plot-twist coming a mile off, but by the middle of the book, the story was twisting in ways that I could never imagine. As with Grange's other novels, this is a fast moving, and highly original novel. Every time I thought the story was slowing down, something new would happen to hold my interest. The book is bloody and many of the ideas involved are gruesome (but no more so than most modern crime thrillers), which may put off some readers, but if you have the stomach for this sort of thing, then it's well worth reading.

_Flight of the Storks_ by Jean-Christopher Grange is the first mystery novel I have read in probably ten or twelve years, as it is not a genre I read in. Watch on TV, sure, but not read, as my fiction tastes tend to run towards science fiction, fantasy, technothriller, and on rare occasions, horror. However, the natural history angle of the book - the main character, Louis Antioch, is hired by a wealthy Swiss by the name of Max Bohm to follow the 12,000-mile migration route of European storks from northern Europe to the remote Central African Republic and find out why many are not returning - intrigued me, as well as the international, globe-trekking angle of the book (Louis travels throughout eastern Europe, Israel, Africa, and even India in his quest).

Of course, there is much more to the disappearing storks as they are but part of a sinister web of intrigue that spans decades and continents. Though it became clear why the storks were vanishing not quite midway into the novel, there were other, deeper, and much, much darker mysteries behind and connected with the vanishing storks, mysteries that connect to the dimly remembered and tragic childhood of Louis himself.

I would warn the potential reader of the book that the novel is graphic at times. I would even say gory. Not gratuitous, in the sense that say Louis is sadistic or gets into especially ugly fights, but without I hope giving too much away, the central mystery of the book is a bit sickening.

It was an interesting novel to be sure. I couldn't honestly tell you if I liked it. It held my interest, which is itself a compliment. One of the major characters in the book, introduced I would say, oh, after the halfway point of the book, remained enigmatic to me, as I never really understood her motives, but then maybe the reader was never supposed to. I liked his writing style much of the time, as the author would have great little descriptions of things Louis saw (apparently the translator of this novel - it was originally published in French - was quite skillful), but then these wonderful turns of phrase, talking about say "the claws of the forest" when describing a building covered partially in vegetation in the jungle or how "once more, the tropics were opening their burning gates to me" when getting off an airplane, became in a few instances rather macabre and a bit too vivid.

Hard to say what it was about this book that made it so compelling. Words like "dark" and "evil" spring to mind.

I suspect that it was the writing, as much as the story, that gave the thing its power.

I could be more articulate about this if the book were not so unlike anything else I've ever read. For complications, it's not up there with the Quincunx by Charles Palliser, but nonetheless, that's all that is coming to mind right now as a comparison. Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman? Maybe.

If you like dark and deep, and you like it well written, read The Flight of the Storks.

Such an unusual read. First night I started I was bored. Why do I even bother how do stroks migrate? Come the second night, the writing style, some mysterious issues in the plot I was addicted. The more I read deeper I was captivated. Well I couldn't dare to share the story as it is so unexpected however it will suffice me to say that I read all of his other books after this one. All thumbs up!

I loved the first book by Grange and I was happy to find this book. I hated it. I could not care less about the main character or, for that matter, any of the other characters. The plot is transparent. A bloody book but definitely not Blood Red River. FYI I read this book in French (my native language.)

The Flight of the Storks was the first book I ever tried to read in French. Despite the difficulties encountered with vocabulary and having to stop and check the dictionary frequently, the quality of the writing was such that I found it irresistible, and was carried along remorselessly by the storyline.
Obviously those reading the English version will find it easier to tap into the wellspring of meticulously constructed suspense evocative background detail and rich imagination with which this book has been crafted. An unreserved thumbs up for this one!