Genre: Fiction—Historical Fiction
Completed: 14 May 2017
Summary & Review:
Otto Prohaska, a naval officer in the K.U.K. Kriegsmarine, takes command of one of the cutting edge inventions of the First World War, a U-Boat. As he and his crew patrol the coastlines of the Adriatic during the war they face all manner of challenges: from attempting to return a gift racing camel to the emperor to nearly suffocating in a submarine stuck on the bottom of the ocean to making their way in the world after the fall of the empire they had risked their lives defending.
First, this was a great book. It was well written, the protagonist Otto was a great character whom the reader couldn’t help but root for, and Higgins deftly presented a look into a largely forgotten time and culture. Second, this book really impresses upon the reader what a complete idiotic folly the First World War was. Millions of Europe’s best and brightest young men were slaughtered for absolutely no reason. That war single handedly brought down virtually every remaining empire and monarchy on the continent and set the stage for even more bloodshed from World War II to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. These imbeciles who started and continued the war should be brought back from the dead and punched in the face. Thanks to that war, Western Civilization itself is still in peril.
So, aside from the anger that mounts as you read about the war, it is a very enjoyable read. There are a total of four books in this Otto Prohaska series and I look forward to reading the rest.
Rating: 8.0
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