I like reading an old-school well written lengthy story every now and then. I prefer it without any major metaphorical gymnastics and delivered straight and preferably on a vast canvas. In Leon Uris I found all that and more and I have to say that I am a fan.
The first thing that I noticed about the way Leon writes is how good he is at his craft. The pacing is just right and the research into the background extremely vast. There is a lot of effort that goes into his works beyond the heavy workload involved in the writing part alone.
[amazon_image id=”006109174X” link=”true” align=”left” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Redemption[/amazon_image]Redemption is a story that starts in New Zealand and works its way back to Ireland, which is where the story inevitably hurls all of its main characters. The background for the story is struggle for freedom in Ireland and the second world war. There are few parts of the story where it meanders a bit too much on the hero worshipping side, but it can be easily overlooked and before soon the importance of the characters soon slide into the background of the events that are unfurling around them.
[amazon_image id=”0553241605″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Mila 18[/amazon_image] Milla18 is a much smaller work compared to Redemption, but the scale of the events in it vastly overshadow the scope of what Redemption has on the table. Everything personal gets left behind in Mila 18, eclipsed by the events in Poland during the beginning of the second world war. The book goes into considerable detail in describing the slow (and intricately planned) dehumanization of human beings, which slowly builds up to the ‘final solution’ of the Nazis.