The Winter Soldier

Slow burning. Sadness. I found myself looking up history and definitions. Lovely and terrifying. A joy to read! A great read!

Excellent book

I really enjoyed this book. Very well researched and beautifully written.

I’d almost begun to think that novels of this quality were no longer being written. “The Winter Soldier” is a story, time and place to lose yourself in, elegantly written and utterly compelling, without resorting to any attempt to show off the author’s cleverness or manipulate the reader.The setting is slightly unusual for a 1st World War novel written in English, as it focusses on the Austro-Hungarian empire in its last throes, rather than the more typical setting of the Western front. Of course, many of the places mentioned have become household names in recent weeks, adding a particular poignancy to the story. Will humankind never learn?The writing is grown-up, brutality is described but not lingered on unecessarily. There is much psychological depth as the main character experiences guilt, regret, yearning and the development of self-knowledge. Like his medical student protagonist, the author clearly has “an unusual aptitude for the perception of things beneath the skin.” The sense of place is perfect, from the villages in the mountains of Galicia, to the opulence of Imperial Vienna, to the medicine faculties of early 20th century universities.The characters come alive on the pages: the resourceful, bossy, rifle-wielding nurse Margarete and the student Lucius - from a wealthy family, but an eternal misfit, whose brilliant yet conflicted mind is often at odds with his actions.I read the Kindle version of the book, which I can recommend as there were plenty of unfamiliar words that needed looking up. Unfortunately the map isn’t clear on Kindle, but it’s not too much trouble to do a little extra research on the history and geography of this area of Central Europe with its ever-changing boundaries.

Time World War I, place is Austro-Hungary’s eastern front, fighting the Russians, plus Vienna,, The storey starts with the hero as a medical student and develops into a love story as he works in a causality station tucked in the Capathesian mountains.