Quo Vadis (Booktober)

 

"Quo vadis, domine?"

 

 

 

Well there HAS to be one of these in here, hasn't it? Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote many, many books in his life, most of them concerning Poland and its history, but Quo Vadis isn't one of them. This is the story of Emperor Nero and all his depravities, which certainly might give you chills appropriate for wrapping up in a warm blanket. But the romance between a pagan centurion and Christian slave is a must-read for any true bibliophile. Written against the backdrop of an ailing Rome, you get a little bit of everything: history, intrigue, murder, romance - and most of all, hope.

 

 

 

 

Set at a turning point in history (A.D. 54-68), as Christianity replaces the era of corruption and immorality that marked Nero's Rome, Quo Vadis tells the story of Vinicius, the proud centurion who has fallen deeply in love with a mysterious young woman who disappears the night they meet; and Ligia, the elusive beauty. Vinicius will not easily win her love, for she is a Christian, one of the group of dedicated believers led by the apostle Peter. Christians are rare in pagan, hedonistic Rome, and suffer great persecution by Nero, a despotic emperor who plunges Rome deeper and deeper into depravity. As Nero's appalling plans for the Christians become ever clearer, time appears to be running out for the young lovers. Vinicius must come to understand the true meaning of Ligia's religion before it is too late ...

(from Goodreads)

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*image not mine

Death on the Nile (Booktober)

The Little White Horse (Booktober)

The Sign of Four (Booktober)

Harry Potter #2 (Booktober)

Troublemaker (Booktober)

The Lord of the Rings (Booktober)

The Kommandant's Girl (Booktober)

"I had become a foreigner in the place I had always called home."

 

What do you do when your home country is invaded? When your way of life is threatened? When your very existence is about to be erased from the face of the Earth? Those are exactly the kind of questions that Pam Jenoff asks in The Kommandant's Girl, a book that tells the story of how a Jewish girl joined the resistance, pretended to be someone else so that she could get close to a high-ranking Nazi official ... and ended up having feelings for the man other than the hatred she was supposed to feel.

Because in the end, emotions aren't all black and white.

September 1939. Overnight, Jewish nineteen-year-old Emma Bau's world is turned upside down when Germany invades Poland. And after only six weeks of marriage, her husband Jacob, a member of the Resistance, is forced to flee. Escaping the ghetto, Emma assumes a new, Christian identity and finds work at Nazi headquarters. As secretary to the charismatic Kommandant Richwalder, Emma vows to use her unique position to gather intelligence for the Resistance - by any means necessary ...

(from book jacket)

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*image not mine

Nemesis (Booktober)

Outlander series (Booktober)

The Conqueror Series (Booktober)

The Lost Symbol (Booktober)

The Host (Booktober)

The Bridgertons (Booktober)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Booktober)

The Infernal Devices (Booktober)

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (Booktober)

Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Booktober)
Broken Sky (Booktober)

The Shadow of the Wind (Booktober)

Dracula (Booktober)

Life and Death (Booktober)

ACOTAR series (Booktober)

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (Booktober)

Sepulchre (Booktober)

Pride and Prejudice (Booktober)

Tempting Autumn (Booktober)

Harry Potter (Booktober)

The Hobbit (Booktober)

Tome Thursday: The Kommandant's Girl

Hello everyone!

I come bearing the gift of another blog post! And I swear, I won't even cry.

Or, I'll try not to.

See, a while ago I noted down the name 'Pam Jenoff' and the title 'The Kommandant's Girl', but never got the chance to do anything with that note until about ten days ago. At which point I got a copy of said book, and sat down to read it.

Of course I knew what I was getting myself into.

See, the thing with me is that I do my homework, and I research most of the books that I want to read, specifically if they're going to be about a period in recent history. In this case, it meant World War II and the occupation situation in Poland, which included but wasn't just limited to martial law and curfew.

So yes, I knew that whatever I was about to read would probably lead me down a dark road and I'd end up with streaming eyes and a runny nose.

I persevered, however, and although a lot of people do criticise it - which I can understand - I think It's a very good book.