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    Germania: A Novel
    Germania: A Novel
    Germania: A Novel
    Ebook427 pages7 hours

    Germania: A Novel

    By Brendan McNally

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    In their youth, Manni and Franzi, together with their brothers, Ziggy and Sebastian, captured Germany's collective imagination as the Flying Magical Loerber Brothers -- one of the most popular vaudeville acts of the old Weimar days. The ensuing years have, however, found the Jewish brothers estranged and ensconced in various occupations as the war is drawing near its end and a German surrender is imminent. Manni is traveling through the Ruhr Valley with Albert Speer, who is intent on subverting Hitler's apocalyptic plan to destroy the German industrial heartland before the Allies arrive; Franzi has become inextricably attached to Heinrich Himmler's entourage as astrologer and masseur; and Ziggy and Sebastian have each been employed in pursuits that threaten to compromise irrevocably their own safety and ideologies.

    Now, with the Russian noose tightening around Berlin and the remnants of the Nazi government fleeing north to Flensburg, the Loerber brothers are unexpectedly reunited. As Himmler and Speer vie to become the next Führer, deluded into believing they can strike a bargain with Eisenhower and escape their criminal fates, the Loerbers must employ all their talents -- and whatever magic they possess -- to rescue themselves and one another.

    Deftly written and darkly funny, Germania is an astounding adventure tale -- with subplots involving a hidden cache of Nazi gold, Hitler's miracle U-boats, and Speer's secret plan to live out his days hunting walrus in Greenland -- and a remarkably imaginative novel from a gifted new writing talent.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateFeb 10, 2009
    ISBN9781416559221
    Germania: A Novel
    Author

    Brendan McNally

    Brendan McNally lives with his wife in Dallas, Texas. A former defense journalist, first at the Pentagon and later serving as the Prague Bureau Chief for Defense News, his writing has appeared in many publications including Inside the Navy, Australia Defense Magazine, The Prague Post, and Central European Business Week. This is his first novel.

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    3/5

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    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It began well, I was engaged by the curious humor and quirkiness of the story. But as it progressed I found myself less engaged and often rather confused. None of the Loerber brothers ever becomes a true individual and in fact all four read like the same person. They think alike, talk alike and it's very difficult to sort out who can do what, not to mention why. I don't even know why they're part of this novel since the bulk of it is about the end of the Third Reich and the jockeying for position that always happens when a government falls.If the Loerbers were supposed to be the everyman characters, the ones with whom the reader can identify, it simply doesn't work. Not only are they emphatically not like us, they aren't given enough time to become familiar to the reader since so much of the narrative is taken up by various Nazis and their machinations. The narrative, though it's a good, clean, solid one just... stops. I never found any real resolution to anyone's story, no satisfaction, no feeling of closure.I'd thought all along that the main problem here was that less experienced writers (This is McNally's first novel) tend to try to juggle too many characters. But I now think it's more than that. I think there are two novels here and neither gets any real play. They both just fizzle out. And that's kind of a shame because I think McNally is a good, workmanlike writer. He just needs a focus he can follow through on. It's not in this book.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It began well, I was engaged by the curious humor and quirkiness of the story. But as it progressed I found myself less engaged and often rather confused. None of the Loerber brothers ever becomes a true individual and in fact all four read like the same person. They think alike, talk alike and it's very difficult to sort out who can do what, not to mention why. I don't even know why they're part of this novel since the bulk of it is about the end of the Third Reich and the jockeying for position that always happens when a government falls.If the Loerbers were supposed to be the everyman characters, the ones with whom the reader can identify, it simply doesn't work. Not only are they emphatically not like us, they aren't given enough time to become familiar to the reader since so much of the narrative is taken up by various Nazis and their machinations. The narrative, though it's a good, clean, solid one just... stops. I never found any real resolution to anyone's story, no satisfaction, no feeling of closure.I'd thought all along that the main problem here was that less experienced writers (This is McNally's first novel) tend to try to juggle too many characters. But I now think it's more than that. I think there are two novels here and neither gets any real play. They both just fizzle out. And that's kind of a shame because I think McNally is a good, workmanlike writer. He just needs a focus he can follow through on. It's not in this book.

    Book preview

    Germania - Brendan McNally

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