Storm Force From Navarone - Sam Llewellyn

 Sam Llewellyn was granted authorisation in the 1990's to use Alastair MacLean's Navarone novels, and their characters, in novels of his own. I don't know anymore than that suffice to say he wrote two novels about Mallory and his Navarone team. This novel was written in 1996 and implausibly picks up immediately at the end of Force 10 From Navarone.

 In this implausibility Llewellyn is following on from MacLean who followed The Guns of Navarone with Force 10. This novels first chapter begins with Force 10's very last sentence! I'm not a fan of novels being picked up and continued on with a different author, ( the worst one being Scarlett, an authorised sequel to Gone With the Wind...rubbish!! ). I find the author who attempts it usually fails to capture the original author's feel and interpretations. In Storm Force the immediate thing I picked up on was that while Llewellyn wrote very similarly to Maclean there was indefinable difference. It was noticeable in the first two chapters or so but once I found Llewellyn's voice I didn't see this difference anymore. The essence of the novel is very much MacLean and in that regard Llewellyn is right on the money.


 Both MacLean's Navarone novels are very implausible and stretch things very imaginatively. Normally this distortion of history would bug me but I put it aside somewhat as he is a fine writer of adventure driven fiction. Of course the Navarone novels came to epitomise the mission impossible genre. Storm Force From Navarone is no exception and if anything Llewellyn ups the stakes in very Maclean type fashion. I started this novel last night and read 180 pages of its 267 before turning off the light. I finished it this evening just before dinner, so it is like MacLean in being a very light, easy read.

 The whole premise of this novel is pure historical nonsense! Mallory's team is to be parachuted into Southern France to find three 'Werwolf' U-boats, each capable of carrying 100 torpedoes and travelling under water at up to 40 knots!!!! Absolute fabrication and total historical nonsense! They are a danger to the Normandy landings and Mallory's team has to destroy them before they wreak havoc on the invasion fleet. Of course what follows is classic high adventure with the many highs and lows of a Maclean novel. The team surmount impossible odds in their efforts to first find the u-boats, which they then destroy with grenades. They even have MacLean's ambiguous traitor in their mix to muddy the waters.


 I've read a few reviews on this novel around the web and most of them are highly uncomplimentary. I didn't think it that bad! Once I settled into Llewellyn's writing style the novel had a very 'Maclean' feel to it Llewellyn must be commended for achieving that at least, after all Alastair Maclean is a hard act to follow. Overall I enjoyed this novel even though it pushed implausibility to the limit. But this implausible high adventure type novel is what MacLean excelled at and Sam Llewellyn has followed in his footsteps well. MacLean purists may grumble at Llewellyn but I don't think he has done a bad job and certainly hasn't demeaned MacLean in any way. It would be interesting to know what MacLean himself thought of this homage to his Navarone novels doesn't it?!

 Utter historical nonsense, but the Navarone novels were written as mission impossibles so the missions had to implausible to make them exciting. I liked this novel and think it is a fine follow on to Alastair MacLean's two Navarone novels. For me the final test is that if it were rubbish I wouldn't have been able to read it let alone finish it! Not MacLean, but not far off. Sam Llewellyn can certainly say he had a fine teacher!!

 Amazon has this with 3 out of 5 stars from 3 reviews. In all honesty I think this is fair because whilst competently written the plausibility is a little too much to take too seriously.

How Many Miles To Babylon? - Jennifer Johnston

Cover from the first edition.

 'A short, brilliant masterpiece'.

 Roddy Doyle.

'A truly heartbreaking story that stays in your mind for ever'.

Maeve Binchy.

 'As fresh and as moving as ever it was, this remarkable novel is still a delight, undiminished by the passage of time.'

William Trevor.

 How Many Miles to Babylon is a 1974 novel by Irish author Jennifer Johnston. She is now into her 80's and has had a long and distinguished writing career. And I know absolutely nothing more about her than that! I will say this now after some careful thought I honestly can't remember if I've read a novel by an Irish writer before. I quite possibly have but it was probably with unawareness of the nationality. Suffice to say I haven't yet delved into Ulysses but intend to one day!

 Babylon is an extraordinary novel because it is only 156 pages long. If anything it is more a novella, or very short novel than a novel per se. I read the whole thing last night starting at 10pm and finishing just shy of 1.00am. When I was younger I never particularly enjoyed this concise type of writing, but as I've gotten older the skill of this writing has really impressed itself on me and I find myself actively seeking out novels of this type. Johnston in her 156 pages has packed so much in it is hard to believe it is so short.

 So what is it about? In essence it is about the class system of the early 20th century, both in civilian society, and the military. It is a very shrewd look at the subject and Johnston exposes it for the snobby despicable way of thinking it was. The novel starts with narrator Alec in a military prison awaiting execution for an unknown crime. He quickly moves onto how he grew up and the events that led to his incarceration. He grew up in Moycullen, Ireland with parents who have a difficult ,loveless marriage. Alec's mother is a snob and a believer in 'class'. His father is a somewhat defeated man because of his wife's views. It is really interesting when a male or female writer write from the point of view of another sex. Johnston may be a female but her Alec, and his voice, is unmistakably masculine. Again her literary and intellectual skills are very apparent.

 The parents relationship is so different from so many loveless marriages because they don't yell and argue as expected, but quietly snipe at each other. Johnston describes it perfectly and the reader cannot help but feel pity for Alec and quiet disgust towards his mother. His father has with drawn into himself and is something of a non-entity ( Alec's mother is not above telling him he is like his father! ). The only common ground the two have is Alec and they constantly battle each other over his course in life. When the First world War breaks out Alec's mother forces him to enlist, not out of patriotism, but as away to hurt her husband who doesn't want Alec to get involved in a 'foolish war'. This indifference to Alec's fate sums up his mother who is totally self absorbed.

 Her 'class' view of the world interferes with a friendship Alec develops with a local peasant boy Jeremy. They share a common love of horses but Alec's mother dis-approves and bans Alec from mixing with Jeremy. They don't see each other for several years and meet again just as both are about to enlist. The friendship re-ignites and yet Alec knows if they serve together he will be an officer due to his background. He doesn't want to be one but can't escape it. In Dublin he meets his commanding officer Major Glendinning who is something of a class tyrant who despises the Irish lower class like Alec's mother.

 In France Alec and Jeremy face difficult odds in being friends. Glendinning finds out and tries to put a stop to it saying it is unbecoming of an officer to mix with the men. The pair find even in the army the class system prevails albeit in a different form. Glendinning is an unpleasant character who has lost sight of all reason and I felt nothing but loathing towards him. The trench life isn't the best written descriptive wise and is on a par with Robert Grave's Goodbye to all That, a disappointing memoir in my opinion even though very well known. Overall the trench scenes are quite brief as the struggles Alec and Jeremy face are the real focus and the war is just another backdrop as the bogs of Ireland were earlier.

 The novel ends with Jeremy going AWOL in an attempt to find his father who has disappeared in the trenches. He returns and is immediately arrested and sentenced to death for desertion. Alec is ordered by Glendinning to conduct Jeremy's execution. It is Glendinning's class driven sadistic payback for Alec's friendship with Jeremy. The novel ends with Alec shooting Jeremy in his cell instead of going through with the execution. The tragic end reveals why Alec is awaiting execution from the start of the novel.

 This is a fantastic novel. Tragic and sad yes, but that is the point. The premise of friendships/relationships that transcend the class system isn't new, but Johnston takes it one step further by applying it to the army as well. Irish nationalism is an obvious under tone ( she is Irish so it is understandable! ), as she has Jeremy enlisting so he can learn how to use weapons and tactics properly. He realises untrained Irish boys would stand no chance against British soldiers when the time came to fight. His politics are discovered and his execution is as much to do with this as his 'desertion'. He was a political nuisance and executing him was a way to get rid of him tidily.

Cover from the edition I read.

 I'm in awe how Johnston could create characters with real depth in such few words. Alec, his mother, father, Jeremy, and Glendinning, are all perfectly realised and the reader could see them as real people. It is an incredible piece of skillful writing and I urge you to read this novel as it is literature at its finest with a damning look at the class system of the early 20th Century. Superb brilliant, tragic, sad, powerful. A novel that you will never forget. Its multiple layers are staggering from such a concise novel, and any literature lover will enjoy every aspect of this amazing novel.

 Highly recommended to all. A modern masterpiece.

 Amazon has this with 4 out of 5 stars from 9 reviews. It was also adapted to television in 1982 and starred Daniel-Day Lewis as Alec and Christopher Fairbank as Jeremy.

Force 10 From Navarone - Alastair MacLean

 Force 10 From Navarone is the only sequel Alastair MacLean wrote in his long and distinguished writing career. He wrote it due to the success of the film adaption of The Guns of Navarone and yet he wrote this novel eight years after the movie was released. For me after I read this last night I was very surprised by the fact I remembered more from this novel than from its predecessor.

 I'm not sure why as I read this, like Navarone, thirty years. But when I think back I re-call enjoying this novel more even then. I actually still do! Opinions differ as to whether Force 10 is a worthy successor to Navarone but for me I think it is. If anything by this stage MacLean had been writing for over ten years and I think his experience and confidence is apparent in this novel. Why? Because MacLean was a master of intrigue and deviousness, and Force 10 sees him at his very best with double cross followed by triple cross!

 The novel follows immediately on from Navarone, in fact the very same night! Why I think this is the better novel is that MacLean deceives the reader with Mallory and his teams mission into Yugoslavia. His plot twists and turns are devious and very cunning but the masterful thing is that they are only half of the story. Once the cover of the initial 'supposed' mission is exposed by Maclean the real one begins, and the novel turns from a craftily written thriller, where nothing is what it seemed, into an action novel extraordinaire!

 The remarkable thing about this novel is its brevity. It is only 200 pages long and I read it in six hours or so reading time. It is amazing and a true testament to MacLean's writing skills that so much is packed into such a relatively short novel. The whole thing bristles with pace and suspense, not to mention a great non-stop action sequence, which takes up the last third of the novel.

 I think most of the criticism of this novel is somewhat unwarranted because a poor novel does not spend five months on the New York Times Best Seller List! Unfortunately the film adaptation wasn't as well received! In fact it failed to re-coup its budget. It was made in 1978 and was directed by Guy Hamilton who had made several James Bond films previously. None of the original stars returned as they would have been too old for the roles, but still it had a stellar cast with Robert Shaw, a young Harrison Ford, Edward fox, Barbara Bach, and Richard Kiel, ( more famous as 'Jaws' from the Bond movies).

 The movie adaptation had very little in common with the novel. It was a flop and I can't even remember if I have seen it! I probably have but if it was so poor it may explain why I can't picture it in my mind. Interestingly MacLean chose to follow on the start of this novel from how the film  adaptation ended and not that of the Navarone novel. He includes several characters in this novel who were from the film and not the novel, like Maria, who is about to marry Andrea. He probably done it so he could sell the novel's film rights, ( after all writing was his career and he had to make a living doing it). It is just a shame that the Navarone film wasn't followed up by a worthy successor.

The military aspect of the novel is complete fabrication and total historical nonsense! But this is fiction and MacLean has taken  the actual Battle of Neretva and embellished it a bit. I won't go into the inaccuracies as they are pointless. MacLean though was always at pains in his novels to clearly state his intentional inaccuracies in the pursuit of an exciting fictional narrative. More modern readers will recognise though the distrust of Yugoslavian politics from the 1990's war. The Chetniks and their collaboration with the Germans was real and Maclean uses that in the novel.

 Certainly a fine novel and an example of Alastair MacLean at his best. I think this is a better novel than The Guns of Navarone and highlights Maclean's fantastic use of cunning twists and turns. He packs so much into his novels which is a surprise when it is considered how short they are. Force 10 From Navarone is almost like two novels in one as Maclean leads the reader, and his characters, on a cleverly disguised red herring, which culminates in a very exciting war novel.

 A very good Alastair MacLean novel which shows him at his very best. Recommended.

 Click here for a look at the actual Battle of Neretva which is the backdrop to the novel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Neretva

 I must admit to having read very little on the Yugoslav Partisans and their war against the Germans. A lot of that has to do with unavailability of reading material. I'm not sure that much has been printed in English either which isn't a help. But if you wish to read a bit on this subject then Fitzroy Maclean's famous book, Eastern Approaches, is a good starting point as he goes into the internecine politics of the various Yugoslav groups and the communist distrust rampant against the outside world. Amongst that he does state they did fight Germans when not squabbling amongst themselves.

 New Zealander Lindsey Rodgers was a surgeon and he went into Yugoslavia to pass on surgical techniques to partisan doctors. He wrote of his experiences in Guerrilla Surgeon. It is a very common book here in NZ but may be less common worldwide. If you can find a copy  it makes for harrowing reading, and like MacLean he shows the communist distrust of outsiders and also the brutal war the Yugoslavs were engaged in against the Germans.

 Also one of the German units involved in the anti-partisan duties was the 7th SS Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen". It was made of of 'Volks Deutsch', mainly from south-eastern Europe. As a division it never really shaped up even after numerous battles with the partisans due to its cosmopolitan make-up. It is written by Otto Kumm ( who has written other works on the various SS divisions ), but being a divisional history is rather dry.

The Pirates! An Adventure With Whaling - Gideon Defoe

'Silly, charming, unique, and hilarious all at once'.

From the cover of, The Pirates! In an adventure with communists.

  How the hell can I review a novel that is only 6 1/2 inches high and 147 pages long?! And not only that but I also read the following novel immediately after it last night. I suppose that shows the ease of which these Pirates novels can be read because I did read them consecutively finishing the second one at 2.30 this morning.

 I'm not in the mood for anything too heavy at the moment and a novel at 147 pages suits me perfectly. I brought them home from the library because I liked the covers and the fact they are comedies. For me comedy as literature has somewhat passed me by as I find it relates better to cinema than to the written word. Horror is very much the same for me even though I do dabble from time to time. Somehow though as i flicked through this the other day I had a feeling I wouldn't be disappointed...and I wasn't!

 I have been unable to find out much about this Pirates series unfortunately. In the back of the novel there is a list of over 100 titles, and yet I'm not sure if Gideoen Defoe wrote them all. It is possible as they are very concise novels and he could churn out 100 novels in a short time span. I will have to do some real digging as I would like to read many more of these very funny short novels.

 In short they are about a group of inept, bumbling, not very scary pirates, who have all sorts of 'adventures'. None of them have any names with the captain being called Pirate Captain, and two of his crew referred to as 'Scarf' and 'Red'. The others are completely anonymous. If you are old enough you may remember The Goon Show of which this is the closet comparison I can give. ( If you don't don't know who the Goons were they were Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, and Harry Secombe ). The show was played on the radio and was bloody hilarious! It was full of all sorts of absurd, quirky characters and situations. Some of the shows were even published and I remember a few copies at home as a boy.

 The Pirates feels as if the Goon Show is its inspiration. Even a bit of Roald Dahl at his quirkiest pokes it head out. These novels are like the Goon show scripts as they are also full of silly humorous illustrations. This novel is about whales and whaling and every imaginable send up is explored. For instance Moby Dick is unmercifully sent up and Captain Ahab is continuously bumped into by our pirate crew. Pirate Captain even manages to cleve in half with his cutlass Starbuck!!

 Interestingly Defoe intersperses his narrative in many interesting factual footnotes pertaining to maritime matters etc. It is an interesting juxtaposition of silliness mixed with very real, yet now somewhat obscure facts. For instance how a 'cocked hat' came about, and the expression, 'cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey' is explained. You'll have to read the novel as I'm not going to tell you!!

 The situations are absurd, deeply funny, and yet with a cutting yet subtle cynicism to the humour. This is like Pirates of the Caribbean but much more farcical. Mix that franchise with The Goon Show and you get the idea of what to expect. It is great stuff and I thoroughly enjoyed this short little novel. I did actually laugh out loud a number of times, and if anything these novels are for the well read as there are numerous nods and winks to some quite obscure facts or events scattered throughout. They certainly aren't run of the mill and quite intelligently written.

 I really recommend these novels. If you like or want something quirky and deeply funny then these are for you. They are genuinely funny with a very dry sense of humour that may not be for all but they suit my type of humour perfectly. Read, enjoy,  laugh, and also be intrigued by Gideon Defoe's numerous and extremely interesting footnotes.

 Believe me you won't forget these novels in a hurry! Irreverent and very, very politically in-correct!!!!

Amazon has this with 5 out of 5 stars and for me that says it all!

The Pirates! In an adventure with communists.

 As stated I read this novel immediately after Whaling. It is slightly longer at 160 pages but it is just as light and breezy, not to mention as hilarious! Obviously Pirate Captain and his crew have an adventure with Communists, and which better commies to have one with than Karl Marx and Max Engels!!

 The action starts in England and then moves to Paris as the pirates attempt to help Marx and Engels create a better image for communism. Needless to say all sorts of commie jokes abound! The text is again filled with quirky and silly illustrations pertaining to the plot, and Gideon again makes prodigious use of his interesting footnotes. The Pirates go through the Louvre, Madame Tussuad's Wax Works, and go to a Can Can dance where they are disappointed the dances are wearing knickers!! The novel moves on to Pirate Captain meeting composer Wagner and then finishing with a meeting, and fight, with Nietzsche, who is spouting out about the wonders of fascism!

 Another quirky silly and funny novel!! Well worth a read if you won't something unique and with a very dry humour to it. Highly recommended, and again you will love the tongue in cheek irreverence and political in-correctness!

Goldfinger - Ian Fleming

Cover from the first edition.

'Pussy, get back in your basket'.

Bond to Pussy Galore.

  I went to my library two days ago to borrow the next Bond novels, 8 and 9,  to find those exact two were gone!! I was miffed to say the least because for weeks on end no-one had touched any of them, and yet as soon as I start reading them someone else jumps in. How rude and inconsiderate...and they aren't even borrowing them in order of publication!! Haha them's the breaks though huh?!

 Goldfinger is the longest of the Bond novels at 347 pages. I couldn't quite read it in one night but came damn close. It was published in 1959 and adapted into a movie in 1964. I love the movie adaptation and believe only From Russia With Love better than it in all the Bond movies. Like the preceding novels the movie does deviate from the novel somewhat but somehow the movie is the superior of the two mediums to my mind.

 I liked the novel but the movie does what very few manage in that it makes it better. This is the third strongest novel of the seven I have read so far but has its moments of datedness. I find when the dated moments came along the pace of the novel slowed somewhat. Goldfinger suffers from going from great engaging moments to ones that feel flat, hence the novel has a somewhat jerky feel to it. Like the movie it starts with Bond busting Auric Goldfinger cheating at cards. It then moves quickly along to him and Bond having a three chapter long game of golf! Suffice to say the movie abbreviates this game but Bond wins by playing Goldfinger at his own game, namely cheating.

 From this scene until the action hits the U.S the novel is completely different from the movie. After the game Bond is invited to Goldfinger's nearby residence for dinner. Here he meets Oddjob for the first time and is shown his Karate skills as he chops in half a staircase's six inch banister, and then kicks out a fireplace's mantle piece. Then the infamous hat comes off, and like the movie, a nearby statue decapitated.

 This is all wonderful reading but from here the novel goes off the boil somewhat as Bond pursues Goldfinger through France into Switzerland. He is now using the car he is famous for from the movies, the Aston Martin DB 3, ( his previous car was his privately owned  Bentley which was destroyed in Moonraker ). In short Bond is caught along with Tilly Masterton, the sister of the girl Goldfinger famously murders with gold paint. She wants to kill Goldfinger but Bond stops her as he wants to put him behind bars.

 Bond is put on a saw bench and expected to die. In the movie of course it is a laser beam and Connery utters the famous line, ' Do you expect me to talk', with Goldfinger replying, ' No Mister Bond I expect you to die!'. In the novel Bond blacks out and wakens in the U.S with Goldfinger then employing him and Tilly under duress in his attempt to rob Fort Knox. Again the movie deviates from the novel because Goldfinger intends to irradiate the golf in the fort and not steal it. Also the movie sees Goldfinger spray nerve gas on the town's occupants, whereas in the novel they are apparently poisoned through the town's water supply.

 The ending is similar except that Oddjob is killed after Bond smashes a window on the aircraft with a knife which sees Oddjob sucked out. He then strangles Goldfinger. The character of Pussy Galore is actually quite minor in the novel and the movie expands on her much more. Funnily enough the Bond girls have little part in the whole novel compared to its predecessors. Tilly Masterton's sister Bond shags on a train in a 24 hour session, and then she disappears from the novel. Bond doesn't get into Tilly's knickers and she is killed by Oddjob's hat.  Pussy Galore he gets to shag right at the very end. But overall the women are less apparent in this novel as Goldfinger is the main player.

 Like some of the other novels Fleming is back on form with some of his judgements. He calls Orleans in France a 'priest and myth ridden town without charm or gaiety'. He then later has a dig at 'female emancipation' saying through Bond ( how convenient! ), that it is the cause of the feminising of men who are becoming 'pansies' and 'sexual misfits'!!! How dated is that thinking? Not only was Fleming sexist he was anti-homosexual. And in many respects I can't believe these thoughts of his were published in the somewhat conservative 1950's. Sure attitudes were different, but one feels they were said behind closed doors and not outside of 'decent' society'.

 Overall Goldfinger is for me the third best novel of the seven I have read. The game of golf was too long at three chapters especially since I know nothing of the game, and Flemings descriptions went over my head. It has a jerkiness due to certain parts having a dated feel, but I was surprised in that for the first time Fleming started to use some bigger words in his narrative. I think it is a good plot which the movie just made better. But the most obvious thing was the Bond girls taking an almost back seat. Sure Tilly Masterton is in almost two thirds of the novel but Bond doesn't shag her and Pussy Galore is a very much secondary character compared to her movie counter-part, ( even her lesbian 'crew' are left out of the novel). And under the surface the reader can't escape Fleming's dis-tasteful ,dated sexual judgements.

 The movie is better because it has taken a strong novel and expanded on its strengths. Still worth reading but not in the same league as From Russia With Love, or the impressive Dr. No.

Night Of The living Trekkies - Kevin David Anderson & Sam Stall

 They thought space was the final frontier - they were wrong.

 I love looking through the fiction section of my local library. Its always 'oooo I want to read that', or 'I will get there one day'. But it is always interesting to see what I come home with. When it comes to fiction I read a broader range of genres than I do non-fiction wise. But it can also be frustrating as its the old proverb, so many books not enough time!!

 I pulled this one out on a whim and instantly put it under my arm once I read Star Trek, sci-fi, and zombies on the back cover. I love zombie movies and after I am Legend this really appealed. When I think back over the years I've never actually read a zombie novel so I was keen to see how the genre would relate to the written word.

 First off this is written by a couple of self confessed sci-fi geeks/nerds!! The writing style is competent and readable but be aware it is at about the level of the best written blogs we  read. In saying that it is still reasonably written and an unchallenging read. In essence it is two amateurs having a go at writing a novel about their hobby. Good on them and it is a good entertaining attempt.

 The premise revolves around an ex-solider who has left the army and now works in a Houston, Texas hotel. It is host to a Star Trek convention and slowly the main protagonist realises that something is terribly wrong. The novel starts with the cliqued outbreak in a secret military base which sets the tone for the whole novel. It is chock full of cliques on everything sci-fi from Star Trek to Star Wars to 28 Days Later to Wolverine!! The title should be a give away as the 'Trekkies' are quickly zombified except for a small handful of survivors who are dwindled away to three by the end of the novel.

 As stated it is cliqued but it is humorous in its delivery. The novel really is a parody and is funny without being laugh out loud. I loved it and just got into the whole geek/nerdiness of it. These two authors have great motivation in writing about their hobby and have written quite a unique original novel in mixing sci-fi elements of a Star Trek convention with that of horror with zombies. I believe it has been made into a low budget movie at same stage. It reads almost like a screenplay and would have adapted to a movie relatively easily.

 Surprisingly there is very little real gore or even swearing. Shit is used once and that is the only swear word in the whole novel! The gore is there but not in over dose quantities and if anything it works better for it because it is the sci-fi Star Trek buzz that is more what the novel is about. Right throughout there are plenty of in house Star Trek jokes and heaps upon heaps of Star Trek facts and figures being hurled about. It is great stuff and since it involves zombies there are several references to zombie movies as well.

 In short an original novel that pokes quiet tongue in cheek fun at the sci-fi community. I love the premise of a sci-fi convention being over run by zombies! I hope the two authors make a bit of cash from this as it is a fun look into the world of the geek/nerd sci-fi aficionado!! It is competently written without being professional in nature and easily read in about 4 hours.  Amazon has this with 4 1/2 stars out of 5 from 78 reviews. Have fun because that is what it is all about, and it will appeal to both sci-fi and zombie lovers!

The Guns Of Navarone - Alastair MacLean

 I watched the movie adaptation of this novel several nights ago for the first time in thirty odd years. It would have to be about as long as that since I last read the novel as well. I wanted to read the novel first before watching the movie but alas wasn't able to. I would have preferred to have done so because with any movie adaptation from a novel there are always changes and fiddling, or if not complete ridiculing of the original source, ( read and then watch I am Legend as a good example ).

 I read the novel over two nights and fortunately I found the movie a fairly faithful adaptation even though it has added in extra scenes for dramatic effect. The movie was critically acclaimed in 1961 and even though extremely dated now with its special effects still a worthy watch. It was written in 1957 and was MacLean's second novel after his outstanding debut with HMS Ulysses, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in naval warfare. For me it is one of the greatest naval novels ever written, ( but not quite in the league of The Boat, reviewed here several months back ).

 Funnily enough this novel was written at the same time as Ian Fleming was writing his James Bond novels. And yet whereas Fleming's novels have clearly dated, MacLean's novel has stood the test of time much better. MacLean was a far superior author than Fleming as is seen by his use of quite a number of unusual, even obscure, words in the narrative. But he has still written a novel that is accessible to all which hasn't alienated any reader of better or lesser accomplishments. As novels they are easy reading but with enough genuine literature usage to satisfy a more discerning reader.

 Of course Maclean went on to a stellar writing career and is one of the 20th Centuries greatest novelists. He died in 1988 but I remember his novels well and have read many of them. It is unfortunate that his novels seem to be out of print as they are still worth while reads and it is a shame a more modern, younger generation don't know who Alastair Maclean was. The Guns of Navarone is the first of his novels I have read since Puppet on a Chain in the early 1990's, which shows how his books have disappeared somewhat. Even my local library only has this novel of his albeit in an omnibus form with Force 10 From Navarone.

 Actually Force 10 From Navarone was the only sequel to a novel MacLean wrote, which was due to the success of the film. It also was adapted to film but it didn't have any of the original cast and flopped. This novel was also adapted to radio in 1997 into a two hour radio programme. Not bad for a book that was 40 years old at the time and I think it shows the enduring fame of the novel.

 I won't go into the differences in the film and book suffice to say the movie has only one real major change outside of adding parts not in the novel. The traitor in the book is a Navaronian whereas in the movie it is female Navaronian. The book has no female characters what so ever but the movie did so as to avoid alienating female viewers. Bums on seats meant such changes from the book for necessities sake. But really that is the only startling change. This traitor is one of McLean's trademarks which he used to great effect in Where Eagles Dare which is a very complex novel with many cunning twists and turns that keep the reader guessing. The film adaptation is excellent and has stood the test of time better than Navarone's has.

 The traitor in this novel wasn't easy to spot and even though I knew there was one. When he was revealed I was miles from the mark and nodded my head in acknowledgement of McLean's deviousness! The only part of the whole novel I actually remembered reading all those years ago was the Stuka attack, everything else was completely forgotten. Possibly the funniest thing about the whole novel is that the destruction of the guns happens in only the last few paragraphs!!! The movie stretches out the wiring of the explosives and the ensuing destruction, but the in the novel that scene is only a few pages long. Most of the novel is how the saboteurs got onto Navarone and then to the fortress. But overall the novel moves along at a brisk pace and I never felt impatient to get to the gun's destruction.

 The novel is also noticeably devoid of swearing! Bastard is the strongest word and even the graphicness of the violence is scaled down by today's standards. Luckily it avoids the feeling of quaintness as MacLean was a fine writer and this novel  feels like it could have been written in the last decade or so. I really enjoyed this novel and without question, for me personally, it is one of the novels from boyhood that fostered my life long interest in military history. The novel is pure historical nonsense but MacLean states so at the start so any inaccuracies can be overlooked and the novel enjoyed as piece of adventure and escapism. The impact of this novel can't be overlooked and Sam Llewellyn has written two more Navarone novels carrying on the tradition MacLean started.

 Still a fine novel and now 64 years old! For me a nostalgic read which has stood the test of time far better than its film adaptation. Alastair MacLean was a fine novelist and all his works are worth reading if you get the opportunity to do so.

Click here for my review on the film:

http://silverscreenmania.blogspot.com/2011/07/guns-of-navarone.html

And click here for my review on Where Eagles Dare:

http://silverscreenmania.blogspot.com/2011/03/where-eagles-dare.html

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