Review: lots of potential
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 11, 2013
I got this on a free day a few weeks ago and have been reading it a little at a time since then. I finally finished it last night.Hammer of the Gods is the story of a German Tiger tank on the eastern front in WWII.This is a story that has a lot of potential. The author seems to have done a lot of research or he made up a lot of very plausible stuff. It does not really matter much to me, it is fiction and what really matters is that whatever technical details are put into the book make sense within the confines of the book and for the most part they do.However, the book suffers from something that a lot of self published books do. Lots of minor errors creep in along the way, and I find them annoying enough that it took away from the book. In some places I wondered if the author was trying to pretend to be a non-English speaker, possibly for more realism. It needs a good editing.Parts of it drag on and could stand some chopping of excess verbiage. It is a long book and I suspect a quarter of it could be deleted without hurting the actual story any, and it would make the book much better.The story tells of a tank crew assigned by the fuhrer himself to lead a charge against the Russians on the eastern front. There is the expected back story of how the the Germans are going to make sure nothing bad happens to the tank, and if it does, of course, it will be covered up. I sort of believed that. It was at least plausible.The battle scenes were mostly plausible although sometimes I found them hard to follow. The tank seemed invincible compared to the Russian tanks, and the Tiger tank was indeed superior to the T34, and the Germans in general had much superior leadership and tactics.The tail end of the book portrays a tank duel between the tiger and a T34 that never seemed like a reasonable thing to have happen. It took away from what was otherwise a good story due to the implausibility.The descriptions of the infantry fighting alongside the German tanks were gritty and interesting, but I think it could have been skipped since it really had nothing to do with the main story.I almost gave it 4 stars. But, in the end the things that annoyed me along the way pointed me toward 3 stars instead. I think a pass through the book by a good editor could make it into a very solid 4 star book. It was still enjoyable to me. The author has set the price at $3. It is a very respectable $3 book.