Blitz: 3 (Rook Files)

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Against the rules, one brings a plane down, bringing about unintended consequences that send them on a secret mission. Add to that a barely-there appearance from Myfanwy, a barely-there appearance from Odette and only a mention of Felicity, nothing at all from the Croatoan and nothing of import from the Grafters, and no progress to the cliff-hanger in Stiletto about Gestalt having some new bodies, and it really starts to disappoint. However, I think it would have been far stronger if it had made each of the respective timelines their own books. Excellent…she has mastered a vast number of written sources, and the resulting synthesis is also a work of graceful, eloquent historical imagination….

This book became another guide for how to live the creative life, the bohemian life, a life full of honesty and art. The descriptions of the air raids on Belfast and Plymouth were particularly heart-rending; how people stood it I really can't begin to comprehend. This book was gripping from the first page, I knew it was going to be good – but it sort of didn’t live up to that expectation throughout the book, unfortunately. With a relaxed style and array of fun characters, including an agent who makes people who look at him see their mother and a baby goat that turns into a little boy, O'Malley's latest will appeal to his many followers.At least it eventually got some action going, but I wouldn't have read further in the series had this been the first book. His first novel, The Rook (novel), was released in 2012 and was a winner of the 2012 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. There is nothing quite so terrifying," my 80 year old father once told me, "as the sound of a Stuka dive bomber heading straight for you.

Lasting eight months, the Blitz was a new and terrible form of warfare that had been predicted throughout the 1930s, widely feared since Neville Chamberlain's declaration that Britain was at war.But over fifty percent of children were not evacuated from British cities, and it is they that Penny Starns has studied. The pace never lets up in this entertaining high-action read… O’Malley has fashioned a near-perfect supernatural thriller… Something unexpected happens on almost every page. I kept reading about the 1920s, particularly 1920s Paris, through my Masters and then my Doctorate in war fiction. On one occasion in The Military Philosophers an overextended memo - "three and a half pages on the theory and practice of soap issues for military personnel, with special reference to the Polish Women’s Corps" - is appended with the simplest yet most withering of comments. Daniel O'Malley has done it again, writing new stories about the Checquy and its members, this time telling two stories-- one during World War Two about two apprentices who share a secret, and one during contemporary times about a librarian whose life is upended when her power manifests in her 30s.

Revealing, original and beautifully written, The Blitz is a much-needed re-examination of one of the most important aspects of Second World War history. Dan O'Malley graduated from Michigan State University and earned a Master's Degree in medieval history from Ohio State University. After having really enjoyed Daniel O'Malley's first two books in the Checquy Files series, I'm sad to say that Blitz fell flat for me. This is a splendid book that does much to illuminate a somewhat neglected part of British military history.When Usha, Bridget, and a Pawn encounter a Nazi bomber in the air, the Pawn breaks all the rules of the Chequy and knocks it out of the sky. So, it’s vital for us to have access to the personal, unvarnished stories and contemporary accounts from those that actually lived through this particular horror.