From the start, I must say that I never considered myself a fan of Sven Hassel's literature and this novel did not made me change my mind. This one is the third novel I have read in the span of last couple of years and to be frankly, I expected at least something different between them. They are not, of course, exact copies but the tone, the characters, the situations are pretty much the same. Did it not happen anything else in that war? I doubt it as other writers found some other aspects to write regarding the same historical period.Well let's take it one by one and analyze the novel in several aspects, in order to rate it. First, the premise. Apparently, it has no premise as the author just describes various hilarious stories involving him and his colleagues from the 27th Panzer Regiment during World War II. But after reading some of it, the reader may come to the conclusion that the author wanted to display the horrors of war, so that such a thing will not repeat in the future. Unfortunately, from various hints, I am not convinced the author truly believed in such a premise and thus, that it was the main book message. More likely, he did not thought of a message, but just wanted to describe some funny stories during war time that would entertain the reader. I will give it a 2 for premise.On the form element, I have the most things to reproach to Sven. First of all, the first half of the novel, the one that takes part on the Greece front, it is very badly written. Paragraphs without any connections with the preceding ones pop up at almost every page and the narrative line is so interrupted that it is hard to follow. Secondly, the author changes the narrative voice from first person to third person for a chapter. Also the rest of the novel is not flawless. The main point that I challenge it is the sick humor. Although it can make you laugh at times, it is not a book for the faint hearted. So I cannot rate it more than 1 at form.In terms of originality, it is clearly taking up the model from Sven's Legion of Damned series. But it is more that just applying the same recipe, only changing slightly the background. It is using the same type of situations, that I thought at a moment that I am re-reading parts of the first novel from the series. I will rate it with a 2, as this recipe seems to have been invented by Sven.The characters are highly stereotypical and do not seem real. Plus, they are the same as in the previous ten novels from the series. Except from the filling characters that are there just to play a small part in one of the story, the main bulk of 10-11 characters that form the main gallery seem to be absolutely the same. They are never changed from one novel to the other and appear to be immortal. They can pass through the enemy lines, fight on all European fronts from the WWII and still none of them dies. And they do not change. They have the same traits as in the original novel and despite being in the greatest war on Earth, they remain pretty much the same persons. I did not liked this at all, so I will rate it with a 1.Regarding the complexity and difficulty, I believe the novel is pretty simple. It was perhaps just another one made on the same recipe of the Legion of the Damned. As it worked out the first time, it must work out this time as well. I will rate it with a 1 for complexity and difficulty.The last criteria is edition. I read a Kindle edition translated into Romanian, and the translation was pretty good for the most part. I wished the editor would use some kind of separators for the first part between various stories happening in the same chapter, as it was pretty hard to follow. I will rate it for edition with a 3, as there were no other major issues.To summarize, the novel seems just another clone of Legion of Damned. It has few original things in it and the level of credibility is almost none. Even if it is a fiction work, I expect the stories within it to be credible. All in all, my final rating for the novel is 1.67, rounding it up to a 2 stars on Goodreads system.+--------------------------+-----------------+| Criteria | Rating |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Premise | 2 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Form | 1 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Originality | 2 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Characters | 1 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Difficulty/Complexity | 1 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Edition | 3 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Total | 1.67 |+--------------------------+-----------------+For more details on how I rated and reviewed this novel, please read these guidelines.
10th Blitzfreeze chapter by chapter: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. The Girl Sergeant Attack on Russian tank unit (including female soldiers). Porta gets hold of some coffee. 2. The Via Dolorosa Of Herr Niebelspang Some tank battle stuff. Long, long speech from Porta! 3. Anti-tank Description of anti-tank fighting. 4. Porta Helps The Padre Another long story from Porta. The section retreats in a tank... and then by cow (you need to read that bit). 5. The Tepluschka Descriptions of winter cold and wolf attacks. Description of Finland. Section finds a Tepluschka (rail wagon). Description of food. 6. The Meat Depot One of the great Sven Hassel chapters. Porta and Tiny visit a supplies depot and carry out an inspection. Long description of enormous feast. 7. Before Moscow More fighting. 8. The Mongol Captain Chief Mechanic Wolf makes his big entrance and does some business with Porta. The section goes to Moscow with a group of Brandenburger commandoes. They are led by Vasjli. They attack a tank factory and make the long trip back - managing to spy on a few women along the way. 9. The Generals Depart Big Russian counterattack, retreat, description of booby traps. 10. The Partisan Girl Long retreat through the snow. Visit to Russian village. Foot amputation. Long return through Russian/German lines - lots of wounded (including Sven and others in the section). Hospital train to Poland.
