James Holland's Jack Tanner series is a series about a soldier in WW II. There are very realistic depictions of battle and Holland certainly doesn't show it in a romantic light: war is dirty business. Holland also knows how to weave historical facts and real historical characters into his books, which make them interesting. They are heavily action-based, so if fighting scenes are not your thing and you want novels that are more about suspense, tension, espionage or how ordinary people coped in war time, then you probably should read something else. These books are about soldiering and about being in the thick of it.

This book is about the battle for Crete that was lost by the Allied forces, mainly because of a few fatal decision-making mistakes by Allied command. They could have won the battle if they had focussed on the airfields instead of the coast. However, because of the heavy losses among German paratroopers, Hitler decided from then on to deploy them as ground troops, while, on the other hand, Allied command started using paratroopers more, because of the possibilities of dropping them behind enemy lines.

The Second World War is often seen as the last war where there was a clear distinction between good and evil and it is easy to be against the wrong, Nazi side. There is, however, a huge grey area that has been explored by many writers: not all Germans were bad and not all the people fighting the Germans were good. In the Jack Tanner books that grey area is a bit lost, which is my only gripe.

The Jack Tanner series is a great WW II action series with plenty of historical detail and I'm looking forward to reading the next book.