Dronningeofret - Hanne-Vibeke Holst

Title: Dronningeofret (The Queen's Sacrifice)
Author: Hanne-Vibeke Holst
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 661
Date read: June, 2009

Elizabeth Meyer, chairman for the Danish Social Democrats has a mission: to win the upcoming Parliament election and thereby become Denmark's first female prime minister. Meyer is "one of the boys"; she desires and dares to take on the power and the leadership. So she's completely unconcerned when Islamic fundamentalists send her death threats because of her Jewish heritage. With her long experiences with Danish and International politics, she knows that being political active bears its price. Besides, she has a much more serious enemy - an enemy that threatens her livelihood in a far larger way: she suffers from the feared disease Alzheimers. And she knows that this is her last chance to seize the job as Denmark's prime minister. She must therefore - before the disease gets the upper hand, convince her protege, Charlotte Damgaard, to step up as her inheritor.

This third and so far final book in the series completely lived up the the expectations set by the two first books. I have no idea how accurate it is, but I still found it fascinating to read about the ins and outs of Danish politics as described from an insiders point of view.

After having read so many books set in the US, it was interesting for once to read a book set in Denmark, where I knew the places described, and could mentally "walk along" with the characters. All the references to actual current events did get a bit distracting though. It's very obvious that the framework of the book is Denmark in 2007-2008, so I'd be reading along, following a fictional account of the political race, and suddenly an event I remembered from the news would be introduced, or well-known political persona would be depicted with the same characteristica as their real-life counterparts - but just with different names.

Other than that, the book was excellent. There was a large cast if characters, but as most were repeats from the earlier books, that didn't confuse me, and skipping from having one person in focus to having another, meant that no one plotline ever had time to get boring before it moved on to the next.

It's a quickly read book. Despite being over 600 pages I finished it in one day.

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Reunion - Fred Uhlman

Title: Reunion
Author: Fred Uhlman
Genre: WW2
Rating: 2/5
# pages: 100
Date read: June, 2009

1932 Germany: Middle-class, Jewish Hans forms an intense friendship with Konradin, a young aristocrat. A year later it is over. Reunion is a look at both the nature of friendship and the effect of Hitler’s rise to power on ordinary lives.

I sometimes get the feeling that books about World War II ought to be highly rated simply because they're about WW2, and therefore I feel guilty when I can't in good conscience do that. I don't know why that is.

Anyway, this is one of those books where I can't rate it much higher than I did. I don't know what I expected of the book, but this wasn't it. At only 100 pages it's more of a novella than a novel, and because of the Danish translation of the title (Iron Gate) I had assumed that it took place in a concentration camp, rather than - as the case is - in a fairly upper-class school in Stuttgart, Germany. I know that's my fault and I can't blame the book for my misconceptions, but it still affected the way I viewed it.

That aside, the book was reasonably interesting, but neither emotionally nor intellectually engaging, with the exception of the very final paragraph. The end was thrilling, and for once I didn't mind the climax being left unexplained - it seemed to fit the rest of the novella. Still, it seemed more like it ought to be a couple of chapters in a much longer book, than a book in its own right.

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