Customer Reviews

Volk

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

 

 

This book is written so poorly. Anthony should have spent a month or more actually reading through the book and questioning things, instead of writing it and leaving it at that. Is it even remotely believable that after Quality falls in love with Ernst that she tells his former fiance, "Oh, I know a perfect guy for you, (who just happens to be my former fiance) if only you could meet ..." And of course, they do meet, oh-so coincidently. That is just one example of things working out too neatly to be satisfying. Half the book reads like poor journalism, the other half like an adolescent attempt at literature. I hate to be harsh on Piers, but dang it, I want to see him go back to writing REAL novels, with real characters, real conflict, and a real plot.

No American likes to think that there may have been good men in the German army during WWII, who were just doing their duty.
Kudos to Piers Anthony for showing there are always two sides to every story.
I liked this book. It made me think about who else I'd stereotyped and gave me a lovely romantic story besides.

Volk is a historical novel set before and during World War II. It has three main characters. Through their eyes we see the development of the war. There is Quality, an American Quaker that will test her pacifism in the war zone; Lane, a pilot and Quality's fiance that joins the war early through the Royal Air Force(RAF); and Ernst, a German exchange student that befriend Lane before the war and later becomes a German SS officer.

This novel is incredible good. It is not the typical war novel with a lot of fighting and blood. It is more concerned about each characters and how the war affected them. Quality, as a Quaker, goes to Spain during the end of the Spanish Civil War and her life changes completely. Lane, is a member of a very special pilot group that promote a new way to do air war. And Ernst, after joining the SS, find his Nazi idealism testes to the limit as the horrible facts of the war unfold in front of his eyes.

This is a remarkable novel in the tradition of other historical novel of Piers Anthony like Tantham Mound. If you like well-written historical novel and want to learn new things about World War II this is the novel to read.

Piers Anthony bills Volk as a politically incorrect novel of the forbidden love between a Nazi officer and the Quaker fiancee of his pre-war American friend. Volk nicely brings out some of the ironies of WWII: that not all Nazis subsribed to their party's ideology, and that the Allies also engaged in practices as barbarous as the Nazis did.

Unfortunately, the novel does little more than play around with some of these ideas or the characters themselves. The storyline covers a six- or seven-year period, but little in the novel reflects that. Nor is it particularly unsettling when the Quaker woman is captured by Nazis for smuggling Jews; nor can the reader really feel that woman's anguish at the compromises wartime forces on her.

Additionally, the book is rather poorly edited; while Xlibris allows authors to circumvent the big publishing houses to get their books into print, it apparently doesn't provide editing services. In the case of Volk, Piers Anthony would have been better off hiring a freelance editor or giving the book a closer second read himself.

Volk is readable, but disappointing. Unless you're a tremendous fan of Anthony's writing, you're unlikely to finish Volk after you put it down.

Finally Volk is an eBook! It is a historical novel set before and during World War II. It has three main characters. Through their eyes we see the development of the war. There is Quality, an American Quaker that will test her pacifism in the war zone; Lane, a pilot and Quality's fiance that joins the war early through the Royal Air Force(RAF); and Ernst, a German exchange student that befriend Lane before the war and later becomes a German SS officer.

This novel is quite good. It is more about characters and how the war affected them. Quality, as a Quaker, goes to Spain during the end of the Spanish Civil War and her life changes completely. Lane, is a member of a very special pilot group that promote a new way to do air war. And Ernst, after joining the SS, find his Nazi idealism testes to the limit as the horrible facts of the war unfold in front of his eyes.

This is a remarkable novel in the tradition of other historical novel of Piers Anthony. If you like well-written historical novel and want to learn new things about World War II this is the novel to read.

"Not all Nazis were evil, and the Allies also kept death camps."

Piers Anthony lived in Europe as a child, was deported in 1940, and raised a Quaker in the United States. Readers who are familiar with his fantasy series, Xanth, may be surprised to learn that Piers has written a serious novel rooted in real-life contentious issues.

Quality is a pacifist Quaker woman engaged to all-American college boy, Lane Dowling, when she meets his friend, Ernst Best, at the beginning of World War II. Quality ends up deep in the German war zone, hiding as Ernst's lover and suffering cataclysms in her deepest beliefs.

Piers Anthony not only makes the storyline feel plausible, (at least, in the context of a novel), he tells the tale with a haunting lack of sentimentality; leaving the reader reeling over the black and white truths we so often associate with the Nazis and the Allies.

This is not a spellbinding book, but it's worth reading if you like to expand beyond the typical viewpoints we're presented with in the media and at school. You may not subscribe to the viewpoints presented, but at least it will get you thinking.

I suspect that was the author's purpose. It's a shame he did it in such a dry manner . . . but a novel with these elements written in a more romantic vein would possibly be even less popular.