Get Rommel by Michael Asher
Cassel Publishing
Historical
My wife bought me a box set of three books. The author is Michael Asher, ex-paratrooper and special forces in the British Army. One of the books I will be reading is a best seller. This book, Get Rommel, isn’t a best seller. At least not by what I have read.
The book covers the creation of special forces during the second world war. They mention their first attempt at using the forces… or should I say the mis-use of forces. He only included this story so that he could introduce some of the players in the “Get Rommel” mission.
Some characters? My gosh, no such luck. It seems to me that anyone who may of had even a small part to play in the mission had their brief history given. I don’t mind getting some background on the major characters but Asher gave little histories on dozens. So much so that I was wondering at points was this supposed to be an exciting historical novel or some dry thesis for a masters diploma. In the end I would say it was a thesis not a novel.
When you think of special forces you think of highly trained, highly motivated professional soldiers. Perhaps in the future they have become that model. In this book it was more like the mis-adventures of Spanky and the Gang.
After reading this book I was tempted to shelve the other two books in some dark corner of the basement. I guess I will try one more book to see if his delivery of a story improves. Though I have to admit, after that first one it has been weeks since I even wanted to read anything at all. If I had to rate this book, one star is bad and five stars was excellent, I would be hard pressed to give it a half star.
Here is my sketch of Rommel.