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Stalingrad: Letters from the Volga
Stalingrad. From August 1942 to February 1943 this model industrial city, bathed by the waters of the Volga, was home to the bloodiest battle of World War II. Stalingrad: Letters from the Volga offers a fast-paced depiction of this titanic struggle: explicit, crude, and without concessions--just as the war and the memory of all those involved demands.
The battle rendered devastating results. Almost two million human beings were marked forever in its crosshairs, a frightening figure comprised of the dead, injured, sick, captured, and missing. Military and civilians alike paid with their lives for the personal fight between Stalin and Hitler, which materialized in long months of primitive conflict among the smoking ruins of Stalingrad and its surroundings.
Stalingrad: Letters from the Volga presents the battle, beginning to end, through the eyes of Russian and German soldiers. Take a chronological tour of the massacre, relive the fights, and feel the drama of trying to survive in a relentless hell of ice and snow.
The battle rendered devastating results. Almost two million human beings were marked forever in its crosshairs, a frightening figure comprised of the dead, injured, sick, captured, and missing. Military and civilians alike paid with their lives for the personal fight between Stalin and Hitler, which materialized in long months of primitive conflict among the smoking ruins of Stalingrad and its surroundings.
Stalingrad: Letters from the Volga presents the battle, beginning to end, through the eyes of Russian and German soldiers. Take a chronological tour of the massacre, relive the fights, and feel the drama of trying to survive in a relentless hell of ice and snow.
- GenresGraphic NovelsWarHistory
120 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
December 30, 2019
The art was solid but the storytelling was hard to follow. The chapter headings that were prose told the battles in Stalingrad much better than the illustrated pages. Most of the stories were told through letters but the cursive in them was so tiny it was difficult to read. I also found that I was pulled out of the story anytime the Soviets spoke because their word bubbles were translated at the bottom of the panel while the Germans spoke in English.
Received a review copy from Dead Reckoning and Edelweiss. All thoughts are my own and in no way influenced by the aforementioned.
Received a review copy from Dead Reckoning and Edelweiss. All thoughts are my own and in no way influenced by the aforementioned.
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March 12, 2020This graphic history rapidly overviews the battle for Stalingrad. Each chapter begins with a letter from a German soldier. Each letter is followed by a description of the battle’s development then an illustrated portrayal of the events.
It should be noted here that a major issue in this book is that the authenticity or inauthenticity of the “letters” from the German soldiers is not made apparent. The book’s presentation makes it unclear whether these are excerpts from real letters or are letters ‘inspired’ by reality.
Despite being played out by a cast of fictitious characters, this history is fairly engaging and covers the chronology of the battle. Its benefit lies in its utility as an introduction to the subject. However, the story telling can be confusing at times and the plot itself should not be used in anyway as a reliable historical source. This gets to my main qualm with the book: due to the ambiguity of the genre (is it historical fiction? Graphic history? Illustrated history?) and also to the ambiguity of the author’s goal (to inform? Entertain? Humanize?) the reader struggles to parse reality from the authorial voice and framing.
Additionally, the author’s audience is unclear. The graphic portions could easily be aimed at children and teens while the historical prose seems made for amateur war historians. These sections also seem to be in conflict with each other in terms of tone. While the historical sections vary from calls to sympathy to delivery of objective fact, the graphic portrayal gives an exciting vision of war, one in which gore and death are almost glorified. I present you with the author’s goals, as stated in a rather oddly placed aside:
“After seeing it…after reading it…after living and feeling it through the pages of this graphic history, there is little left to add to explain how it was at the dramatic battle of Stalingrad…The reader, after submerging yourself in the images and words that make up this graphic novel, should not remain indifferent. You cannot afford it. The emotional charge that sprouts from every corner of this novel is a proposition to deepen the hell that was Stalingrad.”
Though I could sense the author felt emotionally charged by the book, I failed to garner feeling beyond my pre-existing interest in the subject. As to ‘little left to add’ I would argue, this history has left many holes in fact, while it supplied plenty drama.
That said, this is a book in translation, which may explain some of the odd sentence structure as can be seen in the excerpt above. While I try to read generously especially with translated works, this book has other issues that detract from its potential power to interest young readers in history.
One doubts the objectivity of this work. At times the Germans (who were, in this case, the invaders) were made characters for sympathy while the Russians were made out as cruel killers, agents of some invisible Soviet machine. This effect is heightened by the fact the Russian’s words often appear in Cyrillic, therefore unintelligible to most readers. The German soldiers are given a voice while the Russian’s are denied theirs.
Though the genre of graphic history often walks the fine line between objectivity and the excitement typical of a graphic novel, one must be cautious to find reality within the plot lest history be confused with fiction. Graphic histories like this also call into question the responsibility of the publisher to edit for clarity and fact, as well as to be forthright with their marketing in terms of a book’s grounding in historical research. This is not to say there isn’t a place for graphic histories, that there isn’t room for authors to take liberties, nor that historical writing cannot be fun and exciting. Good historical writing should be engaging. However, history is a fragile subject, and war history especially. As publishers, readers, and writers, we must engage with historical stories with objectivity in mind and a watchful eye for bias.
In the end, this reviewer finds that whatever utility this book provides as a historic introduction is trumped by authorial bias and flaws in the structure itself.
It should be noted here that a major issue in this book is that the authenticity or inauthenticity of the “letters” from the German soldiers is not made apparent. The book’s presentation makes it unclear whether these are excerpts from real letters or are letters ‘inspired’ by reality.
Despite being played out by a cast of fictitious characters, this history is fairly engaging and covers the chronology of the battle. Its benefit lies in its utility as an introduction to the subject. However, the story telling can be confusing at times and the plot itself should not be used in anyway as a reliable historical source. This gets to my main qualm with the book: due to the ambiguity of the genre (is it historical fiction? Graphic history? Illustrated history?) and also to the ambiguity of the author’s goal (to inform? Entertain? Humanize?) the reader struggles to parse reality from the authorial voice and framing.
Additionally, the author’s audience is unclear. The graphic portions could easily be aimed at children and teens while the historical prose seems made for amateur war historians. These sections also seem to be in conflict with each other in terms of tone. While the historical sections vary from calls to sympathy to delivery of objective fact, the graphic portrayal gives an exciting vision of war, one in which gore and death are almost glorified. I present you with the author’s goals, as stated in a rather oddly placed aside:
“After seeing it…after reading it…after living and feeling it through the pages of this graphic history, there is little left to add to explain how it was at the dramatic battle of Stalingrad…The reader, after submerging yourself in the images and words that make up this graphic novel, should not remain indifferent. You cannot afford it. The emotional charge that sprouts from every corner of this novel is a proposition to deepen the hell that was Stalingrad.”
Though I could sense the author felt emotionally charged by the book, I failed to garner feeling beyond my pre-existing interest in the subject. As to ‘little left to add’ I would argue, this history has left many holes in fact, while it supplied plenty drama.
That said, this is a book in translation, which may explain some of the odd sentence structure as can be seen in the excerpt above. While I try to read generously especially with translated works, this book has other issues that detract from its potential power to interest young readers in history.
One doubts the objectivity of this work. At times the Germans (who were, in this case, the invaders) were made characters for sympathy while the Russians were made out as cruel killers, agents of some invisible Soviet machine. This effect is heightened by the fact the Russian’s words often appear in Cyrillic, therefore unintelligible to most readers. The German soldiers are given a voice while the Russian’s are denied theirs.
Though the genre of graphic history often walks the fine line between objectivity and the excitement typical of a graphic novel, one must be cautious to find reality within the plot lest history be confused with fiction. Graphic histories like this also call into question the responsibility of the publisher to edit for clarity and fact, as well as to be forthright with their marketing in terms of a book’s grounding in historical research. This is not to say there isn’t a place for graphic histories, that there isn’t room for authors to take liberties, nor that historical writing cannot be fun and exciting. Good historical writing should be engaging. However, history is a fragile subject, and war history especially. As publishers, readers, and writers, we must engage with historical stories with objectivity in mind and a watchful eye for bias.
In the end, this reviewer finds that whatever utility this book provides as a historic introduction is trumped by authorial bias and flaws in the structure itself.
October 25, 2020
Ooof, some heady and serious material but not delivered in a way that made it readable. Specifically, it shouldn't have been a graphic novel. If it wanted to be one, it needed to change its delivery because the full page narrative then a sequence of fights with hard to read "letters" to get inside the soldiers' heads was hard to follow and gather up all that the authors and illustrators wanted me to care about.
The illustrations are vivid, no doubt, but it did not work in the delivery of this complicated but important information.
The illustrations are vivid, no doubt, but it did not work in the delivery of this complicated but important information.
June 27, 2021
Not to long ago, I read a new book by Spanish author and illustrator, Antonio Gil, called The Flutist of Arnhem: A Story of Operation Market Garden. I’ve been on a history kick as of late, as one can tell from these past few posts that I’ve been doing, and have especially fallen in love with comic genres I never used to read as a kid in the past. So far, military comics have been something I have quite enjoyed as they are both quite mature and educational at the same time. I was poking around on Amazon, and found out that Gil had at least one other English language work under his belt, Stalingrad: Letters from the Volga, so I immediately snapped it up. This volume was presumably translated from Spanish to English by Jeff Whitman as he is credited on the cover.
Stalingrad. From August 1942 to February 1943 this model industrial city, bathed by the waters of the Volga, was home to the bloodiest battle of World War II. Stalingrad: Letters from the Volga offers a fast-paced depiction of this titanic struggle: explicit, crude, and without concessions—just as the war and the memory of all those involved demands. The battle rendered devastating results. Almost two million human beings were marked forever in its crosshairs, a frightening figure comprised of the dead, injured, sick, captured, and missing. Military and civilians alike paid with their lives for the personal fight between Stalin and Hitler, which materialized in long months of primitive conflict among the smoking ruins of Stalingrad and its surroundings.
Book Description
This graphic novel chronicles one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the entirety of World War II in graphic detail. The principal characters in Stalingrad is a worn down squad of German soldiers through various phases of the nearly seven month long battle. One soldier, in particular, spends his downtime writing letters to his family back home, giving updates on his health and safety. We see the veterans of the squad grow harder and more pessimistic as the war drags on, as new recruits come in to refill their ranks unprepared for what is happening. The most morbid episode of this being a new commanding officer being brought in to simply die a few days into his tenure because he was unaware of the dire situation the soldiers were truly in. We see the horrors of war truly rear their ugly heads, death, disease, starvation – its all there. Having the war told through the eyes of German soldiers is a unique point of view we don’t usually get in American-made history publications for obvious propaganda reasons, so I was interested to see where that would lead.
Since the narrative jumps around, we aren’t really seeing the story unfold as a documentation of this squad itself, but we are looking at the war and using them as the grounding for the bigger picture. Each chapter starts with a general overview of what is happening at the time, a device Gil also used in The Flutist of Arnhem, as well as letters written from soldiers to their family. It’s an interesting way to tell the story, and helps with showing the overall scope of the battle. Soldiers start to talk about how “No one hopes to leave here alive” and draw comparisons to Dante’s Inferno as the battle churns and churns, we see them all lose track of any sort of self-preservation, as I’m sure many would welcome death at the end of the prolonged siege.
My only issues with this book are conditional, but kind of bad. I absolutely WOULD NOT buy it on Kindle – buy the print version. The Kindle version has formatting issues that render some of the letters on pages unreadable. I had to return my digital copy and purchase a replacement in print form Amazon for this review. Perhaps this will be something that Dead Reckoning can look into, as not having that available in a decent way is a missed opportunity. The English translation is also a bit rough, but its not a deal breaker, it could have just used a bit more polishing.
I enjoyed this book a lot, despite my issues with buying it initially. It’s not as good as The Flutist of Arnhem, but that can be expected considering it’s older. Hopefully, we will continue to see Gil release his works in English as they always take interesting paths story-wise and offer up fresh viewpoints. For a battle, like Stalingrad that has written about more than the actual battle itself lasted, to get a fresh perspective made me satisfied. The storyline is bleak and almost written like a horror tale at times, but it does a great job showing that war isn’t always the hoo-rah patriotic nonsense we mostly see in The West. Keep up the Good Work Dead Reckoning and Antonio Gil, hope to see more in the future!
Stalingrad. From August 1942 to February 1943 this model industrial city, bathed by the waters of the Volga, was home to the bloodiest battle of World War II. Stalingrad: Letters from the Volga offers a fast-paced depiction of this titanic struggle: explicit, crude, and without concessions—just as the war and the memory of all those involved demands. The battle rendered devastating results. Almost two million human beings were marked forever in its crosshairs, a frightening figure comprised of the dead, injured, sick, captured, and missing. Military and civilians alike paid with their lives for the personal fight between Stalin and Hitler, which materialized in long months of primitive conflict among the smoking ruins of Stalingrad and its surroundings.
Book Description
This graphic novel chronicles one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the entirety of World War II in graphic detail. The principal characters in Stalingrad is a worn down squad of German soldiers through various phases of the nearly seven month long battle. One soldier, in particular, spends his downtime writing letters to his family back home, giving updates on his health and safety. We see the veterans of the squad grow harder and more pessimistic as the war drags on, as new recruits come in to refill their ranks unprepared for what is happening. The most morbid episode of this being a new commanding officer being brought in to simply die a few days into his tenure because he was unaware of the dire situation the soldiers were truly in. We see the horrors of war truly rear their ugly heads, death, disease, starvation – its all there. Having the war told through the eyes of German soldiers is a unique point of view we don’t usually get in American-made history publications for obvious propaganda reasons, so I was interested to see where that would lead.
Since the narrative jumps around, we aren’t really seeing the story unfold as a documentation of this squad itself, but we are looking at the war and using them as the grounding for the bigger picture. Each chapter starts with a general overview of what is happening at the time, a device Gil also used in The Flutist of Arnhem, as well as letters written from soldiers to their family. It’s an interesting way to tell the story, and helps with showing the overall scope of the battle. Soldiers start to talk about how “No one hopes to leave here alive” and draw comparisons to Dante’s Inferno as the battle churns and churns, we see them all lose track of any sort of self-preservation, as I’m sure many would welcome death at the end of the prolonged siege.
My only issues with this book are conditional, but kind of bad. I absolutely WOULD NOT buy it on Kindle – buy the print version. The Kindle version has formatting issues that render some of the letters on pages unreadable. I had to return my digital copy and purchase a replacement in print form Amazon for this review. Perhaps this will be something that Dead Reckoning can look into, as not having that available in a decent way is a missed opportunity. The English translation is also a bit rough, but its not a deal breaker, it could have just used a bit more polishing.
I enjoyed this book a lot, despite my issues with buying it initially. It’s not as good as The Flutist of Arnhem, but that can be expected considering it’s older. Hopefully, we will continue to see Gil release his works in English as they always take interesting paths story-wise and offer up fresh viewpoints. For a battle, like Stalingrad that has written about more than the actual battle itself lasted, to get a fresh perspective made me satisfied. The storyline is bleak and almost written like a horror tale at times, but it does a great job showing that war isn’t always the hoo-rah patriotic nonsense we mostly see in The West. Keep up the Good Work Dead Reckoning and Antonio Gil, hope to see more in the future!
June 11, 2022
Desde la Blitzkrieg alemana a la Operación Urano rusa, en Stalingrado se vivió un infierno en vida. De sobra conocido, aquel emplazamiento bélico ha sido objeto de estudio, visita y recreación por parte de muchísimos artistas y medios.
Mi interés por la Segunda Guerra Mundial data de hace bastantes años. Leer a historiadores como Anthony Beevor, distopías varias como ‘El cuerno de caza’ o ‘El hombre en el castillo’, aventuras tales como ‘El Reich de hielo’, o incursiones en el mundo del comic como ‘MAUS’ o ‘Auswitch’, son algunos de los ejemplos que me hacían llegar a esta novela gráfica con muchas preguntas.
¿Qué estructura decidirían seguir Daniel Ortega y Antonio Gil a la hora de enfocar un proyecto tan ambicioso y titánico?
La respuesta la encontramos tan pronto que es el mismo subtítulo de la obra la que nos la facilita: ‘Cartas desde el Volga’.
Así es como, mediante cartas que marcarán el inicio de los diferentes capítulos y enriquecerán su contenido, los autores lograrán dar con una narración visual que logra lo que principalmente busca: Concienciar desde el recuerdo más real.
Apoyándose también en arranques puramente literarios de valiosa información histórica, muy pronto el lector se verá introducido en la materia que ocupa a este volumen, más que bien cuidado en todos sus aspectos.
¿Es necesario recrearse en el horror de la guerra para recordar, por enésima vez, lo despiadado e inútil de su naturaleza?
Supongo que la respuesta es, sencillamente, que no hay que tratar de plasmar más de lo que nuestra historia ya ha hecho.
Si ya los atentados contra la misma vida humana resultan tan gélidos y calculados que te hielan por dentro, solo hay que desviar la atención a las demás miserias que cabalgan a lomos del belicismo para sentir un frío aún más atroz e inclemente.
Es ese frío el que encuentra en esta historia, así como en la historia misma, un papel fundamental en la forma que se resolvió la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Así pues, será el invierno de 1942 el que habrá de servir de techo a un poderoso ejercicio en el campo de la ilustración como el que aquí se nos presenta. Y no se limitará a eso.
Nos paseará por todo el horror de la guerra. Seremos guiados por algunos de los fortines más temibles tanto de atacar como de defender. Viajará por los cielos dibujando representaciones de ambas aviaciones, y hasta se sumergirá en el alcantarillado urbano, allí donde todo se torna, si cabe, aún más desesperado y primario.
Por ello, por la sensación de desamparo tras ver tantos cuerpos mutilados y tantas personas expuestas a las peores enfermedades y circunstancias, considero que este ejercicio no solo disponía de dificultades de ejecución en el dibujo y el guion, sino que también trataba de hacer aterrizar la difícil empresa de concienciar acerca del sinsentido que supone el sufrimiento mayoritario sin medida por culpa de la mala cabeza de unos pocos.
Poco más puedo añadir.
Quizá que la operación ‘Tormenta de Invierno’, que planeaba rescatar de Stalingrado a lo que quedaba de un rodeado VI ejército alemán, debería aplicarse al interior de esas personas que defienden la guerra aún con todo cuanto reside en nuestra memoria colectiva.
Rescatarles de sí mismos para que este bucle de terror detenga su macabro engranaje.
Mi interés por la Segunda Guerra Mundial data de hace bastantes años. Leer a historiadores como Anthony Beevor, distopías varias como ‘El cuerno de caza’ o ‘El hombre en el castillo’, aventuras tales como ‘El Reich de hielo’, o incursiones en el mundo del comic como ‘MAUS’ o ‘Auswitch’, son algunos de los ejemplos que me hacían llegar a esta novela gráfica con muchas preguntas.
¿Qué estructura decidirían seguir Daniel Ortega y Antonio Gil a la hora de enfocar un proyecto tan ambicioso y titánico?
La respuesta la encontramos tan pronto que es el mismo subtítulo de la obra la que nos la facilita: ‘Cartas desde el Volga’.
Así es como, mediante cartas que marcarán el inicio de los diferentes capítulos y enriquecerán su contenido, los autores lograrán dar con una narración visual que logra lo que principalmente busca: Concienciar desde el recuerdo más real.
Apoyándose también en arranques puramente literarios de valiosa información histórica, muy pronto el lector se verá introducido en la materia que ocupa a este volumen, más que bien cuidado en todos sus aspectos.
¿Es necesario recrearse en el horror de la guerra para recordar, por enésima vez, lo despiadado e inútil de su naturaleza?
Supongo que la respuesta es, sencillamente, que no hay que tratar de plasmar más de lo que nuestra historia ya ha hecho.
Si ya los atentados contra la misma vida humana resultan tan gélidos y calculados que te hielan por dentro, solo hay que desviar la atención a las demás miserias que cabalgan a lomos del belicismo para sentir un frío aún más atroz e inclemente.
Es ese frío el que encuentra en esta historia, así como en la historia misma, un papel fundamental en la forma que se resolvió la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Así pues, será el invierno de 1942 el que habrá de servir de techo a un poderoso ejercicio en el campo de la ilustración como el que aquí se nos presenta. Y no se limitará a eso.
Nos paseará por todo el horror de la guerra. Seremos guiados por algunos de los fortines más temibles tanto de atacar como de defender. Viajará por los cielos dibujando representaciones de ambas aviaciones, y hasta se sumergirá en el alcantarillado urbano, allí donde todo se torna, si cabe, aún más desesperado y primario.
Por ello, por la sensación de desamparo tras ver tantos cuerpos mutilados y tantas personas expuestas a las peores enfermedades y circunstancias, considero que este ejercicio no solo disponía de dificultades de ejecución en el dibujo y el guion, sino que también trataba de hacer aterrizar la difícil empresa de concienciar acerca del sinsentido que supone el sufrimiento mayoritario sin medida por culpa de la mala cabeza de unos pocos.
Poco más puedo añadir.
Quizá que la operación ‘Tormenta de Invierno’, que planeaba rescatar de Stalingrado a lo que quedaba de un rodeado VI ejército alemán, debería aplicarse al interior de esas personas que defienden la guerra aún con todo cuanto reside en nuestra memoria colectiva.
Rescatarles de sí mismos para que este bucle de terror detenga su macabro engranaje.
November 23, 2021
This (very) graphic novel immerses the reader in the horrific seven months’ siege of Stalingrad, from August 1942 to February 1943, a bloodbath that claimed two million lives, including 40,000 civilians. The attacking German Wehrmacht and defending Soviet armies endured constant bombardment, savage combat, brutal cold, starvation, rampant disease, and unending terror. Soldiers lived like rats, were hunted like rats, and ultimately eaten by rats. Gil and Ortega show both sides’ desperate strategies, with Soviet dialogue in Russian with translations. Interspersed are German soldiers’ heart-rending letters home as they realize Hitler’s manic folly. “One last hug and a silent kiss to you,” writes a dying Josef to his wife.
A detailed, never academic chronology, vivid, visceral images, and often crude dialogue create a wrenching, finely researched replication of the soldiers’ experience.
While Gil and Ortega do not strongly develop personalities on either side, sympathies are with the German troops, the Soviets generally characterized as pitiless, cruel, and vicious. (One could note that the Soviets were defending their homeland and the atrocities were equally distributed.) The unimaginable suffering of civilians besieged in a city of rubble is covered as a sideline.
Readers will want to consult a large-scale map (the book doesn’t have one) for orientation, and to see why the 1,300-mile supply line failed the German Wehrmacht, with rations ultimately reduced to 100 grams of bread a day.
Gil and Ortega declare their intention to make this book “an instrument of reflection” so the horror of Stalingrad “will never fall into the abyss of the forgotten.” They have succeeded. Readers will not leave this graphic novel unshaken. For young readers, especially, Stalingrad: Letters from the Volga is a powerful antidote to the glorification of war.
Appeared in Historical Novel Review, 2/2020
A detailed, never academic chronology, vivid, visceral images, and often crude dialogue create a wrenching, finely researched replication of the soldiers’ experience.
While Gil and Ortega do not strongly develop personalities on either side, sympathies are with the German troops, the Soviets generally characterized as pitiless, cruel, and vicious. (One could note that the Soviets were defending their homeland and the atrocities were equally distributed.) The unimaginable suffering of civilians besieged in a city of rubble is covered as a sideline.
Readers will want to consult a large-scale map (the book doesn’t have one) for orientation, and to see why the 1,300-mile supply line failed the German Wehrmacht, with rations ultimately reduced to 100 grams of bread a day.
Gil and Ortega declare their intention to make this book “an instrument of reflection” so the horror of Stalingrad “will never fall into the abyss of the forgotten.” They have succeeded. Readers will not leave this graphic novel unshaken. For young readers, especially, Stalingrad: Letters from the Volga is a powerful antidote to the glorification of war.
Appeared in Historical Novel Review, 2/2020
November 4, 2019
Dead Reckoning is a very young publisher I am really starting to like as they are trying to corner the market on historical based comics especially those with a military focus. Stalingrad is a WWII battle that has been discussed to a great extent but this finds a new avenue with the letter concept that places you within the mindset of the soldiers to better comprehend the sheer madness of what was occurring. It is also packed with a ton of information so for those WWII buffs, you have plenty to read.
Being a younger publisher there are some presentation issues including lettering that is lacking the right texture to blend into each scene. Giant walls of text beg you to skip them based on how overwhelming they can be. Overall growing pains that can be fixed with experience
Being a younger publisher there are some presentation issues including lettering that is lacking the right texture to blend into each scene. Giant walls of text beg you to skip them based on how overwhelming they can be. Overall growing pains that can be fixed with experience
December 12, 2019
I was honestly disappointed in this graphic novel. There was a LOT of text on some of the pages and the scraps of "handwritten" notes were difficult to read because it was so tiny. Like others have said, it felt more like reading a textbook than a graphic novel.
While I think this is a good historical graphic novel, it lacked engaging text like I've seen in other novels. There was also an overabundance of gore and violent pictures which, while necessary to accurately depict the event, were disturbing enough to distract from the narration.
While I think this is a good historical graphic novel, it lacked engaging text like I've seen in other novels. There was also an overabundance of gore and violent pictures which, while necessary to accurately depict the event, were disturbing enough to distract from the narration.
February 20, 2021
The history is indisputable with the graphic novel, which is why I moved it to a 3. My main complaint is the font and the feel. The font is wonky and difficult to read in several sections, which is frustrating and pulls the reader away from the story. My other criticism is it feels rushed. The action and story could have easily been stretched into 2-3 larger graphic novels with more illustrations and more engaging fonts.
October 18, 2019
Great way to quickly learn about this part of history.
February 25, 2021
Very beautifully told and masterful artwork
The artwork is vivid and very realistic. The story is straightforward yet solemn. A true antiwar story in the deepest sense
The artwork is vivid and very realistic. The story is straightforward yet solemn. A true antiwar story in the deepest sense
Want to Read
March 28, 2021Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.
October 27, 2021
More or less it is kinda okay, but this specific story about the battle at Stalingrad is presenting some situations in a little wrong way, there are also missed chances. Pictures are excellent.
January 6, 2022
Libro con unas ilustraciones preciosas que explica la batalla de Stalingrado sin ocultar ninguna miseria ocurrida en esa ciudad soviética.
December 7, 2024
Technically this is a graphic novel but there are a LOT of pages of just text in this book.
January 30, 2022
The battle of Stalingrad from the POV of a German soldier.
June 30, 2021
I found this to be an informative read that helped fill out my knowledge of this major WWII battle. Unfortunately, the art was not able to make things quite come alive as I would have hoped - the way humans are portrayed in this style lands them in an uncanny valley more than anything else, which marred the realistic depictions and made for an odd reading experience.
November 7, 2024
This volume concentrates on the experiences of a small group of German soldiers trapped in Stalingrad while providing some solid background on the campaign.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews