Customer Reviews

War of the Rats

5 star:		(101)
4 star:		(60)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

I was expecting somewhat more from this novel than it delivered. The setting was excellent, and I have no problem with the "pro-Russian" slant which offended some other readers -- it was, after all, written from the Russian protagonists' perspective. Keeping in mind the Commissars' propagandic exploitation of Soviet heroes, I found the "noble" portrayals of the Red Army appropriate and realistic. Some of the technical discrepancies were distracting, but in general not enough to ruin it for this reader. It's a novel, after all, a fictionalized account of real historical events and people. (Zaitsev's training of his "hares" is well-documented, although it's questionable whether the "famous" duel ever actually occurred.) What damages the book, in my opinion, is the sappy love-story. It really detracts from the gritty realism of the Battle of Stalingrad. I'm glad the character of Tanya was included, since many female combatants fought and died for their Motherland. I wish she had been written as the Ukrainian upon whom her character was based; maybe the author felt that an American presence was needed to "connect" his American readers to a Soviet conflict. But the "hot-to-trot" seductiveness of Tanya dishonors the sacrifices of Zaitsev's real women snipers, who had no time for bed-hopping antics. And the "romantic" scenes were simply unbelievable -- (lovemaking after crawling through the muck of a sewer? after lying in wait for hours in the freezing snow?)-- and so excruciatingly clumsily written that this reader was actually embarrassed for the characters. Moreover, the sexual situations undermine the real Tanya's war record: she was already a partisan and sniper before meeting Zaitsev, and scored some 81 kills in avenging her family. (For more accurate depiction of the contributions of Soviet women to the Great Patriotic War, read "On the Road to Stalingrad", K.J. Kottam's translation of the memoirs of a woman machine-gunner; or "Night Witches", Bruce Myle's story of Soviet female combat-aviators.) The romantic interludes also degrade the characterization of Vasya Zaitsev, the sniper. Here is a real-life person and a legendary hunt in an embattled city, which hold fascination aplenty, with no need for superfluous embellishment. Overall, I enjoyed the book because of my interest in the War on the Eastern Front, my love for Russia and her people, and my appreciation for the exploits of Vasiliy Zaitsev. I wish the author had paid a little more attention to the details of battle and a little less to the "matters of the heart". What could have been an extraordinary, exciting read was ultimately reduced to entertaining fluff. This is a good book with which to occupy your time during a 12-hour airflight.

WAR OF THE RATS is a superb novel of combat. Combat in a theater of World War II that most Americans, dismally familiar only with the fighting role of the US in the Pacific and Europe, know little about - the Russian Front. Specifically, in this book, the Battle of Stalingrad at the end of 1942.

Chief Master Sergeant Vasily Zaitsev ("The Hare") is an expert sniper in the 62nd Army, that force of the Red Army desperately maintaining a toehold in Stalingrad, under siege by the German 6th Army. Zaitsev is so good at his job that he is ordered to establish a sniper school. One of his students is Tania Chernova, an American woman of Russian descent fighting to avenge the execution of her grandparents at the hands of the Nazis. The graduates of The Hare's training become so proficient at killing Germans that the morale of the 6th Army's front-line troops is seriously threatened. Zaitsev becomes a Red Army hero and a winner of the Order of Lenin. As a counter, the Reich's most expert sniper, SS Colonel Heinz Thorvald ("The Headmaster"), is flown from Germany into the Stalingrad battle. His orders - to find and kill The Hare.

There is no superlative too extravagant to describe this book. At 470 pages in paperback, I absorbed it at one sitting on a flight from Washington, DC to Los Angeles. Zaitsev, Chernova and Thorvald were all actual combatants in Stalingrad. Their roles, as well as the movements of both the German and Russian forces in the battle as a whole, are facts lifted from historical sources researched by the author, David Robbins. The insight Robbins gives the reader into the skills and training of the military sniper is absolutely riveting. The action is gritty and realistic. The characters are finely drawn.

One measure of a novel's excellence is its ability to inspire the reader to delve further into the subject. I've just added to my Amazon.com Wish List a history of the Stalingrad siege.

Set in the hell of the Battle of Stalingrad, Mr. Robbins give us a novel that poignantly explores what it means to preserve one's humanity in a bitter struggle for survival. Not a simple "war story" or a Tom Clancy-like obsession with the technical details of warfare--although plenty abound in this book--"The War of the Rats" vividly confronts us with real people caught up in a desparate effort to cling to life and love. Robbins brings us an intimate portrait of the human condition set against the broader canvas of the devastation of war at its most brutal . His characters are real; the narrative is gripping; and the satisfaction one feels on reading the book is immense. Robbins brings home, through the device of a sniper duel between the master snipers of the Red Army and the SS, what Stalingrad meant to those who fought the battles and bled and died in the greatest single confrontation of World War II. Despite whatever minor technical flaws one may find in the novel, Robbins is a master of his craft. His achievement will be come a classic of the genre alongside "The Red Badge of Courage" and "All Quiet on the Western Front."

I enjoy Historical Fiction and David L.Robbins is very good at crafting a tale around History's Events. In, "War Of The Rats", he recounts the, "Duel", between Russia's Chief Master Sergeant Vasily Zaitsev, and Germany's Colonel Heinz Thornvold, as they played out their sniper's match and starred in the propaganda battles their countries staged, all in the wreckage of Stalingrad. I also enjoyed the alternative view of war that the Author related. The tens of thousands do not fight this particular violence of war, nor do the millions engage in it. These are very personal acts of killing. While it is one individual with a single rifle, the area that can be controlled through the terror their unique talents allow is an amazing study in Human endurance.

Historical Fiction can be tricky as it is hard to set rules for how closely the Author must follow the facts as he or she knows them. There is no excuse for knowingly writing a story that is error prone and excuse it as fiction, and then call it History when it is easily documented. I do not believe the Author is guilty of this. I do think that any attempt to document all facts surrounding the exploits of a Soviet War Hero as chronicled by their Wartime propaganda mentality is virtually impossible. This is the same military mindset that had the submarine Kurst hitting a 50 year old floating mine, and had those on board alive for days when in fact they had died horrible deaths. This latter event was in peacetime, and still pride required lies that were absurd. During a war, facts often are changed, minimilized or embellished. The management of facts is a major part of any war effort.

If you really want to see a distorted view of these events, see the movie, "The Enemy At The Gates", they got the location correct, beyond that is was marginal to wretched. The story that actually occurred in Stalingrad had the entire dynamic any good movie needs. Studios are so cliché in their portrayals of certain groups that the truth is never bad enough it always must be embellished.

Single individuals can have a great effect during a given event or events. What I found fascinating is the degree to which great snipers can control large critical areas of the battlefield not only by their ability to hit a target from astounding distances, but by the fear alone that they cast over an area before a shot is fired. Once their presence is established they can paralyze a large field of conflict with only one man or woman and one rifle.

In the end I don't know how many errors the Author made, and if he made any how important they were. I can say if you enjoy historical fiction, or choose to take the entire work as a novel, you will enjoy the time you spend with this man's work.

Harsh comments made concerning Mr. Robbin's research efforts being, shall I say, "lacking"... are unfair. He is NOT a "gun person" -- and doesn't claim to be one -- but he is quite the detail-oriented historian. His forte is with events of the past. That he made mistakes with respect to shooting and facts about Mausers or Mosin-Nagants is forgivable. He relied on the (obviously-flawed) "expert advice" of an "ex Special Forces" chap who led him completely astray with regard to uphill/downhill shooting, and so on. Yes, yes... I know... while the ".410" designation is actually a caliber and not a gauge, he errantly called a shotgun a rifle. Frankly, all of Page 81 and the first part of Page 82 should be rewritten. As a matter of fact, the author is AT THIS TIME making diligent efforts to correct his mistakes, lest he offend even more shooters, but there are thousands of copies of the current printing in circulation and these corrections won't show up until the next printing.

This is actually a story of humanity. True, it is "sniper heavy," but that too is correct; snipers played a very significant role in the battle for Stalingrad, and that Mr. Robbins chose such individuals as vessels through which he could tell his story was right, fitting, and just. In "War of the Rats," you have a scholarly member of German academia, Thorvald, pitted -- and quite reluctantly at that -- against a Siberian hunter, Zaitsev. Makes for interesting reading, I must say, and I learned more about the hardships endured by both opposing forces -- not only in Stalingrad but along the entire front and throughout the war itself -- than I'd ever known before. Mr. Robbins did what he set out to do... that being, to tell a story. To educate. To relate a harsh piece of history to anyone with a desire to learn. We owe it to those who went before us, in harm's way, and paid the ultimate price, to learn WHY. "Why" there was a war. "Why" there was a Hitler. "Why" there was a Stalingrad.

You'll read below how War Of The Rats is racist, badly written and bland. I read a hundred books a year, and I can tell you these last three reviewers could not possibsly have read War Of The Rats. The characters are drawn so wonderfully and sympathetically that your heart breaks for them, Russian as well as German. In fact, an earmark of the novel is how evenhanded Robbins treats both sides of the terrible conflict of Stalingrad. The descriptions of the city are gut wrenching, the fighting is created with a deft touch, and the people living and dying in this book are authentically drawn characters. Plus, the writing is crisp, imaginative and skillful. So please, disregard these next few reviewers and read past them, to the eighty of so others who have loved this novel and said so. You will be cheating yourself if you listen to the naysayers, who, for whatever reason, did not get it, and lost the opportunity to enjoy a wonderfully transporting novel.

If you like wartime novels this is a book for you. You will want read it straight through, but you won't want it to end. This is as close to being in the hell that was Stalingrad as you can get without having been there yourself. You will feel that you are crawling through the demolished buildings, keeping your head down to avoid the instant, unseen death that snipers deliver. Indeed, this book is about the ultimate sniper duel. The top snipers from Germany and Russia are sent to kill one another - if Stalingrad doesn't kill them both first. Here you will see both points of view, you will experience the desperation of trying to survive the winter and the war, and you will know what it is like to be a sniper. The stalking, the waiting, the shot, and then you move - before you become another sniper's victim. The book is based on real-life events and extensive research. Details are presented in such a way as to not interfere with the well-developed characters and story line. The entire Stalingrad expereince is present, including the way many of the fighters simply vanished into the fighting or the Russian winter.

.. try to get the history right. Particularily such obscure facts as which month Germany invaded the Soviet Union. And that is just one of the small mistakes that add up to make this novel not a very good piece of historical fiction. There are *many* errors about World War 2 history that even an amateur such as myself found glaringly obvious and severely detracted from what should be a historical scene set in Stalingrad. I will not detail all of them because they are simply too many and the novel does not work as a work of historical fiction, though it might fall into the genre of alternate history.

I will next address the problems of simple military accuracy. In this matter I rate myself even below an amateur, but the mistakes are *staggering* and once again detract from any sort of 'supension of disbelief'. The German sniper changes his rifle not once but *twice* during the hunt for the Russian sniper, and the second change is to a sort of rifle he's *never* fired before. If you were hunting the best sniper of the other army would you switch from a weapon you knew intimately to one that you'd never fired before (and in spite of what is written in this book) is *widely* agreed upon to be the inferior weapon? I sure wouldn't and it severly detracts from the plausibility of the duel. Other less severe errors abound, such as the author not understanding the difference between machine guns and sub-machine guns etc. etc. Once again, one can simply set these concerns aside and accept that perhaps this is an alternate history and move on to other concerns.

The characters: Wow, the Nazis sure were bad people, not much question of that, but the author feels the need to beat the reader over the head with it, talking about the SS sniper shooting wounded and nurses and doctors etc., but of course, the Soviet sniper would never *dream* of such a thing because the Soviets are the 'good guys' and the Germans are the 'bad guys'... at least in this book. And another point, that I believe another reviewer was making. This might come as a surprise to some (including, probably, the author) but not all Germans were Nazis. In fact not even most of the German army was Nazis, in fact, a very *small* number of Germans soldiers belonged to the Nazi party. I could digress into illustrative points about this but suffice it to say that the other simply refers to every German as a Nazi, throughout the book. Fine, I guess, from the point of view of the Soviet soldiers, they were indeed all just Nazis... A finer look at the characters reveals very large pixelated people, no defintion to them at all, simply stereotypical charicatures that no one could possibly care about. I certainly didn't and the possibility that one or more of any of the four main characters might die just filled me with... well nothing, I didn't care if they lived or died.

And now the female character and the love affair between her and the Soviet sniper. OH.... MY.... GOD! This is the most pathetic part of the novel, IMHO. The American-Russian woman (uh-huh, whatever) is so sexually liberated that she wants to have sex after crawling through a sewer for several hours, during which one of her party was overcome and died from methane poisoning, and while she and her other companion are still covered in dried feces. Yep, nothing turns me on like a good trek through the sewer of a city of several million people. And the sex scenes are the most clusmily written and awfully described sort of these I've ever read. It got to the point where I simply would skip over these little vignettes and move on. And the trip to the brothel... oh, please, please stop writing this.

And now, on to the writing itself. It is not good, rather it is like a man who has found a list of metaphors is writing very poor descriptions of something he hasn't read nearly enough about. The writing is just plain not very good. It's clumsy and overly-wordy and clearly not properly edited at all.

Any one of these things about the novel would detract from it slightly, but still make it interesting and readable, but the list of errors, cardboard cut-out characters, and poor writing of the author makes it less a work of fiction and more like work trying to get through it.

This author has done a great job of taking both a World War Two historical battle - Stalingrad, mixed in a sniper duel using factual characters and created a story that could almost be mistaken as non-fiction. The details of what took place at the battle are as real and detailed as any of the non-fiction books out there that describe the battle. The sniper story line is also close to the facts including the tactics and weapons described. The author does a good job at describing the town, or what is left of it during the battle. He also paints a vivid picture of what the battle and living conditions were like during the siege.

My only issue with the book was the love story sub plot. It did not seam to work for me; the book is taking place in a hell on earth battle with death all around them, if there was a romance there it just distracted me form the story. I did not pick up the book looking for a love story nor did I expect one thrown in. Besides that it was a very good book. If you are into World War Two historical fiction this is one of the better ones out there.

'Victory goes not to the side with the biggest guns, but to the side with the best shots...'

Staged against the backdrop of the shattered city of Stalingrad, War of the Rats is both a cold-sweat thriller and a heart-rending glimpse at one of the pivotal battles of the second world war. The real events on which the book is based have be alternately dramatised since; in the Jude Law film, Enemy at the Gates. This novel however is far more engaging, chock full of nail-biting cat and mouse encounters as the two patriotic snipers duel to the death.

Like good Clancy or Crichton, Robbins' novel cleverly balances historical and technical fact with dramatic fiction, thrusting the reader into the thick of the action. Its not all gunplay however, and perhaps the real strength of this book is the chilling human realism given to the quieter moments...one can't help but feel a shudder of grief at the thought of the main, and supporting characters surviving day by day amidts the horror of war.

Despite that last comment, this isn't really a 'war is hell' novel, and there's nothing preachy thrown in to upset the pace. What you do get is gritty, often brutal action and believable empathetic characters. I'd highly recommend this to any WW2 buff, but equally to anyone after a cracking good thriller.