Customer Reviews

Semper Fi (The Corps, Book 1)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

First off, this book is a novel and the genre is drama, not war. It is not about war but about the culture and relationships, history and traditions of men who fight wars. The story of course is set against a war, but it could be any modern war in any theatre. What you are getting is a perspective on what goes on in mens minds when they make decisions about their fates or how to get a box of bullets onto an island in the middle of no where.

The reader meets the various characters as they meet one another and sees and thinks what they do from their various perspectives. They tell their own stories, ambitions and worries so you know whats going on in their minds. At times, the reader gets to walk in the shoes of the young private thrust into new situations, then the reader is in the head of a more experienced soldier who meets private. Everything in the military tradition informs an officer that his word is gold and a private's is meaningless and then the private exhibits characteristics that makes the officer contemplate his original presumption. If he acts on the private's words, whill his own judgement be questioned? If he's wrong, will his career or life be over? Those thoughts go through people's minds at every level of decision making. There are the career elisted men, the younger and older officers, the career trouble makers and cilivians who have put on uniforms, there are men whose sons are fighting beside them or wives who worry about them both. There are men who advance quickly and men who the war exposes as being out of their league. They all have historical reasons to mistrust one another but they must work together because there is simply no one else.

Generally, the men must form quick impressions of their comrades. Then the impressions change or deepen. Men of oddly different backgrounds form deep friendships or intense animosities. Men find one another personally challenging, useful, an obstacle or whatever. The reason this is all important is because their lives and the future of the country hangs on every decision they make and this is what makes for such interesting and compelling reading.

There are countless tomes about battles and campaigns but very little exploration, especailly at the lower ranks, of why one man puts his life in another mans trust and almost no writing the explores all the back channels and double dealing that goes on in the military culture.

While this novel is unlikely to fill in your knowledge of any particular battle, it may inform your understanding of every other historical book you read by letting you get into the heads of men at every level of the fighting.

This series is fairly condensed compaired to the Brotherhood of Arms series. It covers from around 1940 to 45 with some extra books taking the characters into the Korean War. The BoAs series introduces you to another great cast of characters but the time range takes you from 1942/3 til 1970 and visits them more often than not when the country is not at war. Also, check out the Honor Series, which takes you to South America during the war. Awesome stuff.

A powerhouse of action, suspense, friendship, and even love. You can almost smell what Griffin is writting. Also read the Men at War series while you are waiting for book 8 or 9 or whatever he is on now. Believe me 8 or 9 or 10 or 50 books of this calibur are not enough. By the time you are through you will feel like you personally know Pick, Ken, Erine Page,Zimmerman, Banning, and all of the others. So buy them all not just Semper Fi we need to keep W.E.B. Griffin in pencils and paper.

After reading this, the first book in "The Corps" series, I the purchased the rest three at a time. Since finishing the series, I have now read every book Griffin has published.

Griffin's character development is so thorough that you feel you have gotten to know a real people as the various series develop.

The Corp Series offers a great "behind the scenes" look at WWII in the Pacific Theatre, what it meant to the men that served and stirs the patriotic juices inside of you.

One of many fantastic books from a terrific author.

Semper Fi is the first book in Griffin's The Corps series, a collection of ten books constituting about five thousand pages that give an anecdotal history of the Marine Corps during WWII and the Korean War. The series is so captivating that I finished all ten books within a month of starting Semper Fi, even catching a great deal of grief for having the next two books delivered during a tournament in Las Vegas.

Semper Fi starts out with a spy story set in Pre-WWII China among the Fourth Marines, our little known contribution to the western imperialist forces in prewar China. In this compelling story, Griffin introduces his key characters whose lives form the central thread of the rest of the series.

The series is historically quite accurate, making it practically a Roman a clef. Actual historical characters pop up frequently. This makes the series fascinating to a history buff like me, but what I found truly fascinating is Griffin's manner of storytelling. Almost all the battle action is related by characters narrating it, usually over a beer or a Famous Grouse scotch. Their modesty saves Griffin from getting bogged down in detail, or even needing to spin evocative descriptions. The characters emotional reactions (and their alcohol consumption) evoke the appropriate responses from the reader.

The biggest weakness in his writing is his almost Jimmy-Buffett-like use of very rich characters as deux ex machine. The few poor characters in the book tend to end up being improbably rich, usually through marriage to girls who are every Marine's dream (i.e. rich, beautiful, and insatiable)

Griffin is a wonderful storyteller, and his use of the storytelling hero technique is a wonder to behold. His success speaks for itself.

I have read many books on the subject of WWII but none have captured my attention like the CORPS series by W.E.B. Griffin. I feel like I could have been frinds with Killer McKoy,Ed Banning or Flem Pickering, and can not wait for the next installment in this series.

GREAT JOB ! What a great read

W.E.B. Griffin's The Corps series begins with Semper Fi, introducing us to China Marines, Old Breed Marines, and WW I-era medal winners who still felt an intense loyalty to their Marine Corps.

(Read R. Sander's excellent reader's review of Semper Fi. What Sander wrote holds good for every book in this series. Then come back to my review.)

Griffin focused the first seven books in The Corps series on the old and new Marines who fought, with obsolete equipment, inadequate manpower, weak help from the US Navy, and heroic bravery, to prevent Japan from winning an early, permanent, victory in the Pacific theater.

Griffin suspended this series as of late 1943 --

[When off on the US mainland -- never mentioned by Griffin, the American populace, including our scientists, designers, manufacturers, and patriotic work force, brought to fruition a massive, modernized US Navy Fast Carrier Fleet and US Marine Corps Amphibious Force.]

Griffin's abrupt halt in the series "forced" me to take up a fascinating study of the Pacific War, as it was carried out by two invasion forces -- an Allied, multi-country, Army/Navy/Marine, air-sea-amphibious force managed in the Southwest Pacific by General Douglas MacArthur, and a US Navy/Marine sea-amphibious force inder the direction of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and commanded alternately in the Central Pacific by Admirals Bull Halsey and Raymond Spruance.

I am eternally grateful to W. E. B. Griffin for starting me on my quest to learn what happened to the US Marines both during and after the periods and battles referred to by him.

The Pacific war fought by the US Marines and the US Navy from late 1943 until August 1945, including US Naval and US Marine aviators, is filled with true stories of great heroes and magnificent sea battles, every bit as thrilling as fictional Napoleonic War tales about Patrick O'Brian's James Aubrey or C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower.

Since this series focussed on a Marine/OSS working relationship with General Douglas MacArthur, I would hope that W.E.B. Griffin will one day continue it with McArthur's brutally uncomfortable, under-supplied and then massively equipped, little-known campaign through the Solomons, New Britain, New Guinea, the Phillipines and Japan, with the Pickerings, Ken McCoy, Ernie Zimmerman et all, even General Willoughby, who really was the awful man described by Griffin, as he went on to work for Generalissimo Franco after the Korean war.

(The invasion of Normandy followed by many European battles, and the Pacific Island campaigns including Iwo Jima and Okinawa, have gained most historical of the past news and motion picture film coverage, to the annoyance of General MacArthur's fans, then and now, so W.E.B. Griffin's The Corps series isn't complete yet, IMO. )

For those who want a lesson in history, for those who were never in the Corps, for those who were in the Corps, you have to read this book. I've been approached by other Marines who have read it and hands down, the best entertaining history lesson you'll have, all eight of them. I'm waiting for the next one....

This is the first book in a long time which has been able to capture my attention long enough to finish it front to back. I could not wait to sit down and see what Killer McCoy and Pick were going to encounter next. This is the way the Corps is and should remain.

Griffin has a way of explaining military life in those days like no one else can. The reason for the four stars instead of five is that other than the fact that it takes so long in between books for him to write, there isn't as much action as you would expect from a war series. Sure, the war scenes, in his descriptions, are great! They are just a little too far apart. Sometimes you feel like you are reading a soap opera. But let me restate that the series is fantastic and will leave you wondering what happens next. The only problem is having to wait for the next book to come out. If you want action, try "Red Storm Rising" by Clancy, or "Red Pheonix" by Larry Bond.

The best historical fiction account of the War in the Pacific Anywhere! The whole Corps Series is awesome.