The Cosmic Bullet, The Enigma Series Part One by Andrew C. Broderick is a science fiction/futuristic story. I gave it four stars. There is an unknown object traveling toward the earth at a high rate of speed.
I received a complimentary copy in an Amazon promotion. That did not change my opinion for this review.
Link to purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Bullet-Enigma-Part-One-ebook/dp/B06XPCQS8C
Thanks to Rosie Croft of Pen & Sword for providing me a paperback copy of this book that I freely chose to review.
I have forever been intrigued by personal accounts of events I’ve only ever heard of through history books or TV documentaries, as the narrative always seems to focus on the overall campaign or the big events, rather than on the everyday reality of the people who lived through it. These days there is a move towards making sure that all experiences are captured (mass observation archives are fundamental for that), and I think this is a positive step. History is not only what happens to the kings, queens, members of government and those in authority. It affects us all.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of mysteries, puzzles, and riddles, and the story behind Bletchley Park, the Enigma machines, and the efforts to decode the German messages (not only the German messages, but mostly) during WWII make for a fascinating real story, and one that was kept secret for many years. When I saw this book, I knew I had to check it.
Robert Harris provides the foreword for this book, whose content seems right out of one of his own novels. The book, divided into eight chapters (Codes and War, Bletchley Park, 1940: A Fateful Year, Battle of the Atlantic, North Africa and Italy, The Resistance, Towards Victory in Europe, War in the Pacific), contains also images, a chronology, a detailed bibliography and sources, including a list of documents from the Imperial War Museum, and an index, which will facilitates any research tasks for those readers looking for some specific information.
This volume is not a simple collection of letters or interviews with code breakers, but its content is organized around specific themes, and the narrative offers a fairly comprehensive historical background to each chapter. Readers are not required to be experts on WWII to follow the book, and most of them are likely to finish the book with a better working knowledge of the conflict and, in particular, of the role the code breakers played in it. I don’t think people who are particularly knowledgeable about the war will discover any new information in the storyline, but the letters and the personal accounts will provide them with insights into what it was really like to live through some of the situations and a better understanding of the role these men and women played in the war effort.
This tome taught me much I didn’t know, and I enjoyed the personal accounts in particular. Some of the highlights for me were: the fairly detailed explanations and examples of how the decoding worked and what roles different people played in the process, comments about how Bletchley was organised, how cold the huts were, how many hours they spent working there, the fact that they needed tall people to work with “the Bombe” because they had to reach the top of the huge machine, what the staff did in their limited spare time, Alan Turing’s quirks, the importance of capturing the coding tables from German U-boats… Of course, there were coders working aboard ships, in other countries, there were spies working abroad, and there are numerous accounts that bring to life different war scenarios, like the fear of being aboard a navy vessel in a convoy while waiting for the German submarines to strike, or being sent into a sinking German submarine trying to retrieve as much information as possible… Oh, and the Navajos using their own language to flummox any enemies trying to decode their messages.
I recommend this book to people interested in WWII, particularly in the role the communication specialists and the code breakers played in shortening the length of the war. Anybody researching the topic will find it full of useful material, and the bibliography and the list of documents will further assist their search. And, casual readers will likely feel, like me, amazed at how these people managed to crack the codes at a time when technology was so basic. We can see the first steps towards the development of modern computers, and I, for one, want to visit Bletchley Park and see, with my own eyes, where everything started.
This is a really slow book. Since it’s in the Thriller genre, I was expecting there to be more action and a much swifter pace. With that said, the over all premise is an interesting one. White Hat hackers unite! It takes over half the book to get to that point, but once it does, there is a bit of action and a set up for more action in the sequel.
Jacob Michaels is always so very, very polite. It takes a lot of dialogue to be that polite and considerate all the time. He’s faced with some tough truths that rise abruptly and smack him in the face and yet, he is still the polite, caring person. In his 30s, he’s never pursued a deep romantic relationship wanting to wait until he can afford a wife… but he says it in a more considerate way. This quaint mind set made me think of 1800s and even early 1900s where it was fairly common for men in their 40s to marry women half their age. So obviously Jacob has some deep seeded issues to work on.
His mom and granny were White Hats as well but unfortunately they are dead. I think having them alive and meddling would have made this story much more interesting. As it is, the ladies are nearly all romantic interests with a few other skills that we rarely get to see in action. Petra is the main love interest and is a skilled White Hat, though we are mostly told that and not shown. I think she’s in her 40s or older but that’s unclear. Julie is a flirtatious barista with hidden skills. Patty also has hidden skills but seems to be most proficient in inventive bedroom play. Haddy is married. Master Po, while currently celibate, used to enjoy oral sex and was proficient at it. As you can see, with nearly every female character, there is a bedroom scene. While the men get to be professional managers, hackers, bad guys, cops, spies, business men, etc.
At one point, Petra is thinking to herself how attracted she is to Jacob because of his aura of danger. So funny! Jacob hasn’t done anything dangerous at all at this point. He keeps in shape but he doesn’t have any hand to hand combat training nor any gun or knife proficiency. So, no danger here. Also, that was during the bike tour of the Long Island wineries. Petra has a motorcycle but she lacked the experience to carry a heavier passenger on the back seat, so she let Jacob drive. Argh! If Petra had a slew of other skills that we see used in this plot, that scene wouldn’t bother me so. With Petra relegated to Main Love Interest, it’s a let down. She’s been riding since her teen years but has never carried heavier people on the back seat…. It would have been so easy to give her this one skill and put it on display.
OK, so about halfway through this book we finally get a dead body. Yes! Let the action commence! The pace does pick up a little but it’s still pretty darn slow for a Thriller. I did really like how complicated things got for Buzz, Jacob’s best friend. He’s been taking it too easy, using Jacob to complete his own work tasks (Buzz’s coding skills aren’t all that). Now he’s in some hot water and he has to make some tough choices. I expect Book 2 will show us more of Buzz.
There are a ton of info dumps all the way through this book. Some are fun, cutting edge science or just plain science fiction and I enjoyed those. Like there’s some image encryption tech coupled with tattoos. Yes! That’s very interesting stuff and I wish we had more of it. There’s info dumps on China’s economics and how that relates to cyber security and also on the Enigma machine of WW2. Those were interesting if a bit long winded. Other info dumps were pretty pedestrian and only increased the word count to this novel. Honestly, I don’t really need to know how many pairs of socks Jacob packed to go to DefCon in Las Vegas.
For the most part, the characters stay the same throughout the story. I was expecting some character growth since there wasn’t much action going on. Perhaps the characters needed some action to force them to grow. Buzz showed the greatest growth and that was just a smidge. Some evil Russians (Sergei and Grigory) come in late in the book and give us some true, if one dimensional, villains to watch out for. I did feel for the white tiger Nikky.
All told, the book has promise but it’s long winded. 3/5 stars.
The Narration: Steven Jay Cohen does a pretty good job. He has distinct voices for all the characters and most of his female voices sound like ladies. I felt he struggled with some of the accents a little, some being a bit over accentuated. For the first few hours, Cohen kept putting a slight emphasis on an odd word in every other sentence. It wasn’t William Shatner level, but it was noticeable. After a while, this did smooth out and wasn’t noticeable very often. There’s no technical issues with this recording. 4/5 stars.
I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by MK Marketing. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.
If it wasn't for editing! Ugh... Still, 4 stars :D
So much delicious fun with a twins puzzle and a murder to figure out :) Adorable!
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