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Sandstealers
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 6, 2022
Sandstealers are journalists and war correspondents. They are friends, but also competitors for journalistic prizes. They travel from one war zone to another, live in shabby hotels or in whatever remains of them, in constant danger and yet in relative safety, given by the flight ticket out, and a deceiving protection of their powerful employers and nations. Their mission is to observe and report but not to participate. Not engaging isn’t always easy though, nighter is being friends or having a life.
War zones change people, they leave no one untouched. Those who, driven by a journalistic passion will choose this life, will never be the same. Their innocence will be lost, and lives different, always and forever. After the excitement that they have felt, the rush and the feeling that they have lived more in one day than people back home in a lifetime, nothing else will be enough. And nobody back home would understand what it was like anyway, so coming back to “normal” life is out of the question.
Condemned to each other's company, war junkies need their dose of adrenaline and build their lives around the bizarre conditions that they have chosen to live in.
Ben Brawn used to be a foreign correspondent, covering for BBC conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo and Iraq so he knows what he is talking about… Maybe this book is just a bestseller or maybe his own katharsis. For me it was a very well written, fast paced and interesting read about human nature in a very different setting.
War zones change people, they leave no one untouched. Those who, driven by a journalistic passion will choose this life, will never be the same. Their innocence will be lost, and lives different, always and forever. After the excitement that they have felt, the rush and the feeling that they have lived more in one day than people back home in a lifetime, nothing else will be enough. And nobody back home would understand what it was like anyway, so coming back to “normal” life is out of the question.
Condemned to each other's company, war junkies need their dose of adrenaline and build their lives around the bizarre conditions that they have chosen to live in.
Ben Brawn used to be a foreign correspondent, covering for BBC conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo and Iraq so he knows what he is talking about… Maybe this book is just a bestseller or maybe his own katharsis. For me it was a very well written, fast paced and interesting read about human nature in a very different setting.
July 25, 2016
Thoroughly enjoyable; Brown has a solid writing style that I found very honest and absorbing.
April 18, 2014
Very well written. Felt like it needed one more chapter at the end
March 18, 2020
This was a reasonable novel with a rather slow beginning. It opens in 2004 with a well known journalist being kidnapped, and there potentially being a fellow journalist who let him continue down the road to an ambush where he was kidnapped. Following this we rewind to 1994 in the Balkans where we meet the little crew of press this journalist has been working with. As the story unfolds it progressively gets more interesting as it begins to unfold that everyone surrounding him had a reason not to like him, or in some cases to hate him. As such, it is somewhat of a mystery novel in that we are left to wonder who it was who let him continue into the ambush, did they set him up or what level of involvement did they have.
These questions are answered within the story, and there are a few false leads where you have the suspicion that it may be one person over another however at the end all is revealed and it turns out to be a not all together unexpected person, but not high on the list either, until their circumstances in their entirety were revealed.
Overall, it's a good story however I can see why some people had abandoned it early on as there wasn't much drawing you in initially, it's not until the latter stages that it really becomes a compelling read. So it's a good book for a plane or train, but if you have other things hovering for your attention you'll likely find yourself getting distracted and your mind wandering.
These questions are answered within the story, and there are a few false leads where you have the suspicion that it may be one person over another however at the end all is revealed and it turns out to be a not all together unexpected person, but not high on the list either, until their circumstances in their entirety were revealed.
Overall, it's a good story however I can see why some people had abandoned it early on as there wasn't much drawing you in initially, it's not until the latter stages that it really becomes a compelling read. So it's a good book for a plane or train, but if you have other things hovering for your attention you'll likely find yourself getting distracted and your mind wandering.
September 14, 2017
Started reading the book with low expectations, however by the end of it I was surprised and impressed with the story and the writing. Not a big fan of fiction but this book was an exception.
January 15, 2018
Aborted. Shit boring.
February 12, 2019
Not a classic read but enjoyable, the writer writes as one who has been there, which he has.
February 17, 2017
An exciting read, verging on being a war-jounalist whodunnit.
August 23, 2015
A surprisingly entertaining book. I picked up expecting just another over the top thriller to divert my attention for a bit. But the story dragged me in. The war correspondents at the centre of the story aren't glamourised. Instead it's made clear that they are adrenaline junkies, with the next big story all that gives their lives meaning. When one of them is kidnapped in post liberation Iraq, it forces all of them to examine their lives and complicated (and often messy) relationships.
March 7, 2013
The world of war correspondents, and their lives and loves on the road. Interesting, well-written book and an insight into the news world behind the cameras. The story covers several conflicts from Sarajevo to Chechnya to Iraq and follows 4 or 5 people who enjoy working together. Overiding it all is the star reporter who gets taken hostage by Pisslamists.
January 22, 2014
Challenged my kids to read something out of their "comfort zone", so that is what I did with this book....surprisingly I actually enjoyed most of this story. There were parts that were a little slow, but overall I enjoyed it.
June 14, 2011
It was kind of boring, overload with details and I didn't finish reading it.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews