I was chosen by Netgalley to receive an advanced reader copy of “No Man’s Land” by Simon Tolkien. Given that fact, it has not altered my opinion on the book at all. “No Man’s Land” has a scheduled release date of January 24th 2017.

There are two main reasons why I wanted to review this book. First and foremost, with a last name Tolkien, and a nerd rep on the line, it’s kind of a given to pay homage to a man that sucked me into the fantasy realm. I was beyond excited to learn that this is Tolkien’s grandson writing this book. Secondly, can I just say that this cover is so eye catching? If this book were sitting on a shelf in a bookstore, I would be drawn to it, regardless of what genre it is in. I earnestly hope to go into this book without any predilection. While I am a completely immersed and won over by “Middle Earth”, I’m excited to have a completely different scope into the mind of a Tolkien.

“No Man’s Land” (I’m going to say) is divided into 3 parts:
1. Pre-war- character descriptions, locations, background
2. Mid-war- a very “Saving Private Ryan” description, not for the faint of heart
3. Post-war- how the war has affected the characters, and continues to affect surrounding people.

For the complete review, please visit:

https://quitterstrip.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/its-the-promise-of-heaven/ ( )

Adam Raine's path from child to man is an especially rocky one: First, he loses his mother in a freak accident during one of this father's labor demonstrations in London. Then, after a fresh beginning in the rural countryside, his father dies attempting to rescue the dowager Lady Scarsdale in a fire at the manor house started during labor unrest at the mines. Adam's adoption into the Scarsdale family rouses the contempt of the baronet's younger son. Then the Great War breaks out, and Adam is launched into a series of horrors worse than he could possibly have imagined. One of the few bright lights in his life is the parson's daughter Miriam. -- Involving story with periodic eruptions of suspense (down the mines, on the battlefield). Ever-so-slightly predictable, which is why I've withheld the final, fifth star, but still an enjoyable reading experience from an author I really like. ( )

I was excited to be given a chance to review this Advance Reader Copy. I'm fascinated by WWI, especially first-hand accounts of trench warfare. A novel written by JRR Tolkien’s grandson about his experiences at the Somme in WWI, what more could you ask for?

A lot, apparently.

My feelings about this book formed a slightly imperfect parabola: disappointment in a lackluster beginning, then amazing apex, then slowly dwindling back down into jejune story. I think Tolkien is riding his grandfather’s coattails a wee bit. I've discovered from previous books that often the descendants of famous authors try to distance themselves from their predecessor’s success in order to stand on their own two feet, but that was not the case here.

The first 47% on my Kindle read like a poor man’s Jeffrey Archer.

A rushed, “tell” not “show” sentimental story of a young boy with a heart of gold just aching to do the right thing. The writing was lacking. There were so many instances where I read “he could feel”, “he could see,” “he could hear,” that I was taken aback. This usage of present perfect – if that’s the tense it is – takes the reader a step away from the events at hand. Bottom line, it’s just poor writing. The first half of the book was overly sentimental with dialog that was stilted and pedantic. The plot was interesting enough to keep me going, but the amateurish writing overrode any enjoyment of the story. About a third of the way into the book, I almost bailed. The story was so full of tired tropes and one-dimensional stereotypes that I wasn’t sure I could keep going. But I’m really glad I did.

At the halfway mark, the reader finally reaches the Somme, the bludgeoning horror of WWI, and the story takes off. The shocking atrocities and grueling fatigue, the appalling brutality of trench warfare, these were things I had read about before but never with such depth. I loved this part of the book, and it was worth the slog to get to this point. I tore through the middle, my eyes blazing across the sentences. The account of the war had the impact I wanted. It was emotional reading without becoming saccharine, and I was captivated. I’m wondering if Tolkien’s real desire was to write this middle section, but to get there he had to write the insipid initial story line.

The necessary last third of the book was essentially an epilogue of what happens to the remaining characters, and I was invested enough now to want to know what happened in the end, even though I knew that everything would be tidied, the wrongs would be righted, that good would prevail. (And sometimes, it’s best if everything doesn't work out perfectly. Just a thought, S. Tolkien. It makes the story more real.)

So, would I recommend this? Maybe. I would most certainly recommend a heavy-handed editor. The middle of the book about WWI is amazing reading, so if you're willing to endure the beginning to get there, then I encourage it.

Thanks to Netgalley, Doubleday Books, and Simon Tolkien for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

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No Man’s Land opens in turn of the century London with young Adam Raine living in the city with his parents. His mother is a woman who loves to read, appreciates music and the old ways. His father is a bit of a rabble rouser and very much a communist. He barely brings in enough money to feed the family and he is more concerned with the plight of every man than the plight of his family. When his wife dies as an indirect result of his activities he is devastated. He is left with his young son and really not much else. He writes to family, swallowing his pride, and asks for a job far from the city that has brought him nothing but grief.

He moves to coal country and tries to settle in. His cousin expects him to be the man he was but his wife’s death has broken something in him and he does work for the benefit of the miners but he is not the firebrand that he was. Young Adam has his own troubles fitting in as all of the young men in the town are off to work in the mines as soon as they are able but his father has different dreams for him – he is going to school so as to have a better life. This causes friction at times in his relationships with the other boys in town.

Life eventually settles into a pattern until there is a disaster at the mine that leads to a further disaster in which Adam loses his father. Before he dies though, he saves the life of the owner of the mine, Sir John and this leads to him inviting Adam to become his ward and move into the mansion. This is not appreciated by Sir John’s wife or younger son Brice, and they do not make Adam’s transition easy. It also doesn’t help that Adam and Brice have feelings for the same woman.

Sir John really comes to appreciate Adam’s work ethic. So does his elder son who is in the Army. Adam soon heads off to Oxford but just as he is feeling comfortable about life – World War I begins. Adam heads home and soon he and his friends join the army and find themselves in France….in the Somme.

There is so much in this well written, well researched book. I was drawn in from the beginning and found myself rooting for Adam from the start. He is that type of character; the one you want to have good things happen to but you know that all is not going to go easy. While this is a book about WWI, and it does spend a lot of pages in war time, it focuses more on character then it does on the carnage of the war. That is not to say that there is no blood and guts – there is, it just doesn’t overwhelm as some war books can.

It is a very compelling read full of rich descriptions that don’t stint on what life was like at this period in history. It is not easy to read at times, but no war book is. My only complaint is that the book was full of detail until it reached about three quarters of a way through and then it seemed as if the ending were rushed through. The last few chapters held a lot of defining plot points and they all wrapped up a little too neatly and a little too quickly. It was disappointing after all of the attention to timing a detail in the major portion of the book.

That small disappointment aside, this was a very good book and well worth reading. ( )

Adam Raine grows up in Islington in the first years of the twentieth century until tragedy strikes and he and his father have to relocate to Scarsdale, a small mining town in North Yorkshire, where his father has found employment. By not joining the other boys working in the mine, Adam remains somewhat of an outsider in the town, until he can prove his mettle when the mine is hit by disaster, and events spiral out of control. When war breaks out, Adam enlists but has to wait until he has turned nineteen before he is sent to France and stationed at the Somme. By then it is May 1916, and the British Expeditionary Force is preparing for the Big Push to break the stalemate between the two Allied forces and the German infantry.

It becomes clear very quickly that Simon Tolkien is a consummate storyteller who cares deeply about his characters, though it has to be said that he takes his time in the telling of the events centring on Adam, with the pace almost pedestrian in places, and certain details are repeated: for example, just within the first 60 pages the reader is told no fewer than three times that Adam is brave by nature. The pacing is very uneven throughout the book, and the reader has to wait until p. 104 until the pace starts to pick up, only to slow down again until the start of hostilities at around p. 250. The novel is essentially divided into three contextual parts: pre-war, during the conflict, and the personal aftermath after the Armistice has been signed, though in terms of narration, the middle section feels distinctly different from the other two, being in equal parts succinct, engaging and moving, with both the physical and figurative imagery standing head and shoulders above the rest, while the sentences and in particular the dialogue in the first and, especially, the third part often appear stilted, lacking in confidence and ill at ease, almost if written by a different person.

While I was particularly struck by Tolkien’s impeccable research, painting a picture in London and the North of England of hardship, poverty, strife and unrest, and a marked class struggle that present a marked contrast to the pre-war golden age portrayed by Louis de Bernières’ novel The Dust that Falls from Dreams, which I read last year, and his ability recreate both the terrors and the companionship in the trenches, his characterisation of other central characters is less successful. There is Miriam Vale, the beautiful, pure and innocent parson’s daughter, and Brice Scarsdale, the younger son of the local baronet and mine owner. I’m sorry to say that both appear as one-dimensional caricatures, with Adam’s attraction to Miriam instantaneous, while Brice develops an intense hatred of Adam within seconds of meeting him – there is no room for subtleties, as both are painted at opposite ends of the spectrum. While I could in some way understand Brice’s antagonism towards Adam – though it became in places completely overblown – I thought the love story in particular entirely unconvincing, with Miriam a very pale, limp and weak character, and I repeatedly found it completely puzzling why Adam would be drawn to her; I’m afraid I didn’t care about either of those two and remained entirely unengaged, even when tragedy strikes. Add to that that the plot development regarding these two participants was entirely predictable and at times bordered on the melodramatic, and it is easy to see that for me this was by far the weakest and least successful aspect of the novel.

Set against this the nightmare scenarios and harrowing accounts of the events taking place on the 1st of July 1916 (and subsequent enemy engagements), the more powerful because written in an understated and matter-of-fact voice. While they don’t add another perspective to the other examples of First World War fiction already published, they portray the horrors and the senselessness of war in a way that recent TV and film adaptations and factual documentaries, though they have made decent attempts at reconstruction, will never be able to as there are limits to what can be shown, and bring home to the reader the terrible burden and contradictions that survivors of the conflict had to live with, and the impact on their loved ones.

I applaud Simon Tolkien’s ambition and aim (nearly 600 pages honouring his grandfather J.R.R. Tolkien’s memory, who fought on the Somme between July and October 1916, as the dedication informs us), published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, but the novel ultimately remains just one of the many books with the conflict of the First World War at its centre, and doesn’t stand out among the rest.

(This review was written for Amazon's Vine programme.) ( )