A ridiculous adolescent fantasy with nationalist and racist themes, it is unclear to me why this is considered a classic. The fighting spirit of the Cossacks is absurdly romanticized and makes the book read more like propaganda than literature. The characters are without character, so to speak - flat, one-dimensional personalities. The gore and violence is only slightly effective, nothing that I can't get out of a round of "Mortal Kombat," and because it does not develop around a plot I can take seriously, it all pretty much goes to waste.

I can't help but imagine some thirteen-year-old boy bored in middle school writing something quite similar to this. Too many pretenses to be fun pulp, too much laughably bad dialogue, and just overall not worth your time, even the time it takes to read 150 short pages. Go watch Braveheart if you want something similar done better.