“The Lieutenants” by WEB Griffin is a book that looks at the US military organization at the end of The II World War and the immediate years after. This is a really cool book. I read a lot of history books and I have to say it is one of favorites. Griffin creates some really interesting characters and he presents them from both angles, he shows theirs strong points but at the some exposes their shortcomings. It also touches on some very interesting historical facts, for example the not well known War in Greece or the political maneuvers after the War, when the Russian Communists were as much of a danger to USA as the German Nazis.
The author makes fun of the sometimes trivial military organizational rules and regulation, I had never served in the military but I can imagine he is very close to the truth. The perfect example is the story of Private Lowell who was hired to play golf and polo to satisfy the needs of the Two Stars General.
This book is well written it can make you laugh with really funny stories and also make you cry with some very emotional moments. The only reason why I did not give it 5 star rating is because the author sometimes gets so detailed about describing some military regulation that at the time I found myself skipping paragraphs or a page.
“The Captains” is the second book in the Brotherhood of War saga by WEB Griffin. This book is not as good as the “The Lieutenants” book but still very enjoyable. The author makes a smooth transition from the first to second novel and continues to develop the same main characters while introducing some new ones. The book is set during the Korean War. Like in his first novel the author is concentrating more on the personal and professional lives of the characters more than on the actual military battles, but he brings some good balance between them, which makes the book fun to read. Griffin often jumps from subject to subject and sometimes it is hard to follow , but he also connects the story lines that makes up ( a little bit) for the “chaos” in the novel . As in his previous book, my major complaint is the meaningless pages of describing some military regulations and documents , it makes this really easy to skip paragraphs.
Overall this book is fun to read , the characters are more and more interesting and the story line is developing nicely ( I acutely read the last book in this series , so I have a good perspective and I know what the author is trying to create).
“The Majors”, the third book in the Brotherhood Series is probably the weakest book of the series. Griffin just over did it with the boring descriptions of regulations and documents and introduced too many new “minor” characters. I could not get through some of the pages. On the other hand the author nicely transitioned from the first two novels, to keep developing the main characters and the main story line (the creation of the army aviation).
“The New Breeds” – the seventh book in the “Brotherhood of War” It is the least interesting book in the series so far. After “The Generals” , Griffin went back few years and wrote an “addendum” to what happened during the Congo conflict. He created new and developed previous characters, but it was hard to get excited about Jack Porte and others after the author finished the story of Lowell, Felter and Bellmon. This book added another chapter of Fleter’s life but it did not create any excitement ( for me) . It was a lot of writing about nothing but I have to say that the ending was quite electrifying.
“The Aviators” –was the first book I read in the “Brotherhood or War” series , and then I realized that it was the 8th book of the series. I then read 1-7 books and reached out for “The Aviators” again. I still have to say that Griffin should of stopped the series after “The Generals”. For me it is much less interesting, reading these books backwards.
“Special Ops” the last book in the Brotherhood Of War series is absolutely the worst book of the series. The Brotherhood of War started strong , first few books were really good , but after “The Generals” the quality of writing , the ideas , the plot became less and less interesting. Looks like Griffin was trying to “milk” the series but at the end it was not worth it. I would have to say The Brotherhood of War went from A- to C very quickly. “Special Ops” is the perfect example. The first ¼ of the book is just repeat of the previous novels. Most of the time, it would be an exact copy of a page or a paragraph from the one of the other books. For someone who read them all, it was really boring. Later, there were a lot of references to other books but that was tolerable ( not very long). After maybe 100 pages somethings finally started to happen. However, it was slow developing, lots of document reading, planning , drinking but very little action. Nothing was happening, I had really hard time to stay with it. For example a page where the author recited the full names, ranks and nick names of 20 Cuban soldiers, how is this relevant to the story. (-beats me!?) The last chapters were the worst, all it was, was reading report after report. I barely finished the book and I only did because I wanted to finish the series. Just a big disappointment to very promising series.
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This book has some of the original characters with Bellmon , Lowell and Felter, but mainly concentrate on capt Oliver and his struggle off combining his personal ( love) story with his military career. There were some really boring moments but overall if you want to finish the whole series you need to read “The Aviators”
“Special Ops” the last book in the Brotherhood Of War series is absolutely the worst book of the series. The Brotherhood of War started strong , first few books were really good , but after “The Generals” the quality of writing , the ideas , the plot became less and less interesting. Looks like Griffin was trying to “milk” the series but at the end it was not worth it. I would have to say The Brotherhood of War went from A- to C very quickly. “Special Ops” is the perfect example. The first ¼ of the book is just repeat of the previous novels. Most of the time, it would be an exact copy of a page or a paragraph from the one of the other books. For someone who read them all, it was really boring. Later, there were a lot of references to other books but that was tolerable ( not very long). After maybe 100 pages somethings finally started to happen. However, it was slow developing, lots of document reading, planning , drinking but very little action. Nothing was happening, I had really hard time to stay with it. For example a page where the author recited the full names, ranks and nick names of 20 Cuban soldiers, how is this relevant to the story. (-beats me!?) The last chapters were the worst, all it was, was reading report after report. I barely finished the book and I only did because I wanted to finish the series. Just a big disappointment to very promising series.
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