Customer Reviews

The Odin Mission

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James Holland does an above average writing with "The Odin Mission". The book was well written and ninety percent believable. I plan to read Holland's other novels.

while Holland has worked hard to get the historical - and especially military - details right, his characters remain at best sketchily drawn bundles of clichés.

but let me begin by saying a couple of things:
1. I listened to this as an audiobook and it is entirely likely that this has colored my perception of the book - ESPECIALLY of the characters. the terrible accents are unintentionally comical and remain so throughout the book for all the characters except the main character, who inexplicably has no accent.
but that's not the fault of the author (unless of course the accents are written into the book 'zis iz outraigeouz!')
2. I DID enjoy this book - despite the wooden dialogue, the ridiculous plot lines, the sketchily drawn characters, I found it to be a fun 'read'. Holland's obviously done his research and his descriptions of the tactics, weaponry, clothing and equipment is first rate.
the plot also moves along at a rollicking pace without any dead spots for romantic interests or useless exposition.

but there are a few things that are hard to ignore. the French are lampooned mercilessly in the form of a Lt of a platoon of Chasseurs who is both an arrogant cowardly puffed up imbecile. the rest of the company of the Chasseurs are not even named and play almost no role in the story except to die rather pathetically given that they are supposed to be elite mountain troops. the main character Jack Tanner is appealing but rather blind to his own obvious shortcomings - he loses his temper about every 5 pages for example, a fact which is glossed over until a scene where the narrator says "he prided himself on never losing control of his temper [!] but this was too much" and proceeds to punch a superior officer in the face. hahaha! I laughed out loud at this one.

anyway, the book is probably a better bet than the audiobook, but unless you're a real fan of this kind of war fiction you might want to skip it and just read Bernie Cornwell's "Sharpe" series - which this series is clearly aping.