An unsparing portrait of a cast of characters working for the BBC in London at the outset of the war, this novel is both funny and moving, though Fitzgerald’s keen sense of irony assures that the writing is never sentimental. I’m about halfway through Blitz by Daniel O’Malley, which is the third book in the Chequay series about a supermatural quasi-governmental organization. I had never heard of Mass Observation, a real war-time 'Big Brother' that made regular reports on citizens morale and were not averse to criticising some of the dafter procedures that were in place in the early days. It's October 1940, the Battle of Britain reaches a stalemate and the Luftwaffe begins the bombing of Britain’s cities.

Set over a single twenty-four-hour period, and played out mostly in darkness, the drama is tense and exhausting. Add to that a barely-there appearance from Myfanwy, a barely-there appearance from Odette and only a mention of Felicity, nothing at all from the Croatoan and nothing of import from the Grafters, and no progress to the cliff-hanger in Stiletto about Gestalt having some new bodies, and it really starts to disappoint.Novel in a series,but it's kept on a decent level and mostly interwoven in the narrative so it doesn't feel like info dumps. It is on historical record that, on the evening of October 13th 1939, six weeks after war had been declared on Hitler's Germany, Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain, fierce and implacable opponents for years over the appeasement issue, met together with their two wives, Clementine and Anne, for a private dinner at Admiralty House, and event which caused ripples throughout Westminster. He is the author of the Checquy novels, The Rook and Stiletto, the first of which won the 2012 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and became a television miniseries. Gardiner excels at using eye-witnesses to bring alive the horrors of aerial bombardment, and she takes us outside London to remind us how badly Coventry, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Belfast and other cities were hit by the Luftwaffe. I appreciated how O'Malley is not beholden to revisit all the past protagonists, passing references are more than suitable.

It is June 1943 and the RAF are mounting another bombing raid on Fortress Europe, part of the whirlwind that Arthur Harris had promised Germans would reap following the night blitz they waged against Britain. Award-winning journalist and historian Andrew Nagorski was born in Scotland to Polish parents, moved to the United States as an infant, and has rarely stopped moving since. Once Lyn is judged sufficiently ready, she's released to essentially be an intern and apprentice, ready to balance her family and her dedication to the Chequy. But there's one thing and only one thing that happens in Bridget's story that impacts Lyn in any way: the German airman manages to survive in London for a while and spends some time with some prostitutes.Like previous entries in The Checquy Files, Blitz is fun, humorous, original, and has great female characters. I kept reading about the 1920s, particularly 1920s Paris, through my Masters and then my Doctorate in war fiction. On one occasion in The Military Philosophers an overextended memo - "three and a half pages on the theory and practice of soap issues for military personnel, with special reference to the Polish Women’s Corps" - is appended with the simplest yet most withering of comments. Instead, it was incredibly boring, obscenely long (cut 80% and the story doesn't really change), and populated with a host of lackluster characters. Bridget produces almost indestructible pearly mass, Pamela uses air to wreak havoc, and Usha can do crazy stuff with gravity.

Born in Bedford in 1965, Sean Longden first became interested in history as a child listening to his grandfather’s tales of Gallipoli. The result was a continual series of thrusts, parries, and counter-thrusts, as first one side then the other sought to wrest the initiative in the struggle to control the ether. As Juliet Gardiner makes clear in this detailed book, the Blitz of 1940-1941 was not something that was confined to London, but affected provincial towns and cities all over Britain. I liked both stories at different times: Bridget’s was most fun when she and Wattleman went on their undercover crime-fighting mission, and Lyn’s was most interesting when she was on the run from the Chequey, the supernatural organization she is employed by. This was a battle fought with strange-sounding weapons-"Freya," "Mandrel," "Boozer," and "Window"-and characterized by the bravery, self-sacrifice, and skill of those who took part in it.Each one is perfectly entertaining in its own right, but the net effect is that this felt less like one giant novel and more like two modestly sized novels plus a couple of quick short stories all sort of smooshed together. I love war stories and liked the fact that throughout the book you were hoping the main character, Edie's house wouldn`t be bombed, that she would be okay as an evacuee and that her family members contributing to the war effort would be okay.

O'Malley always delivers on that front especially, with people feeling three dimensional and realistic. Although each installment in the series stands alone, I recommend you start with The Rook, read Stiletto, and only then read Blitz. That's the only connector that matters in this book, and Lyn's story worked perfectly fine without that knowledge.

Recruited by the Checquy and trained in a hidden island academy, she is sent into the field, where she herself becomes wanted for murder based on brandinglike effects on the victims. There were very minimal ties between the two storylines; I kept expecting them to come together in some meaningful way but was routinely disappointed.