Jean-Luc & Anna Lise by A.G. Cullen Book Review Written By Lisa Lebel
Jean Luc & Anna Lise : A Novel of The Napoleonic Wars, by A.G. Cullen is a harrowing tale following three main characters through the harsh realities of the French Revolution.
The following Book Review of Jean-Luc & Anna Lise has Spoilers*
The novel opens with Jean-Luc and his dearest friend Adrien, on the day that enemy soldiers come to Colmar to execute their village priest. Shortly after this shocking event, Adrien’s sister, Anna Lise, is born. After only a short glimpse of their joyful beginnings, Jean-Luc and Adrien vow to join the emperor’s army once they are old enough – and thereafter embark on a journey that is all the more heart wrenching in its reality of the times.
Despite this book weighing in at a shocking 668 pages – at first glance one may assume this to be a ponderous tome of a novel. However, A.G. Cullen manages to have this tale be fast-paced and compelling throughout the entirety of the novel. The gut-wrenching horrors of the Napoleonic War seen through the eyes of one solider, brings to life the shocking reality of the times. While it is so easy to distance ourselves from what we read in the history books, this tale delivers an unflinching account of the life of a solider in 19th century Europe. Through the eyes of Jean-Luc Calliet, A.G. Cullen shows readers what it was like to be young and in love, while your country and comrades are falling to pieces all around you.
One of the more poignant takeaways from this novel was living with the horror and moral conflict of being ordered by your captain to commit unspeakable acts or be killed as a traitor yourself. Experiencing the shock of realizing your comrades in arms are sometimes more of a danger than the actual enemy, and seeing your fellow soldiers commit unspeakable brutalities is something that reading a historical account of the war simply cannot provide. Attempting to travel through a war-ridden country without being molested is nearly impossible, and there is equal danger no matter who you’re fighting for.
This novel is outside of this reviewer’s wheelhouse and likely not one I would have picked up on my own randomly, but I highly recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. Readers may find this similar to the Outlander series, with none of the time travel aspects or ridiculously sappy romance elements. But, in the respect of following individual persons through historical events – it definitely shines in that aspect. While Outlander is geared mostly towards women in the overly romantic setting as well as time travel – most of the action and intrigue of seeing actual historical events play out through the eyes of individuals is drowned out by these aspects. Jean-Luc has none of these distractions and gives an actual historical depiction of the life of the solider during these distressing times. Interspersed between chapters are also illustrations and maps of where the wars or battles are taking place, which is certain to remind readers that the events depicted in this novel did indeed occur, adding gravity to the tale.
In closing, Jean-Luc & Anna Lise is an excellently written novel that is both compelling and heart wrenching, and certainly worth checking out!
The Forgotten Fiction ANNOUNCEMENT SCHEDULE 3-2021 To 6-2021: we are going keep TFF’s Eager Readers up to snuff with all of the happenings, from book reviews, to guest reviewers, to giveaway contests, to Rune Works reader-inspired creations.
Seeing how TFF has grown immensely in just a few short months and less than a year since its launch, I want to thank you all for your support and shared enthusiasm for all that we love as bibliophiles.
ANNOUNCEMENT SCHEDULE 3-2021 To 8-2021
March 30, 2021 @ 12pm EST
TFF Book Giveaway Contest Is Announced & Opened To Enter Free
April 5, 2021 @ 1pm EST
TFF Livestream & Giveaway Contest Drawing
April 28, 2021 @ 1pm EST
TFF Book Giveaway Contest Is Announced & Opened To Enter Free
May 4, 2021 @ 1pm EST
TFF Livestream & Giveaway Contest Drawing
May 26, 2021 @ 1pm EST
TFF Book Giveaway Contest Is Announced & Opened To Enter Free
June 1, 2021 @ 1pm EST
TFF Livestream & Giveaway Contest Drawing
June 30, 2021 @ 1pm EST
TFF Book Giveaway Contest Is Announced & Opened To Enter Free
July 6, 2021 @ 1pm EST
TFF Livestream & Giveaway Contest Drawing
July 28, 2021 @ 1pm EST
TFF Book Giveaway Contest Is Announced & Opened To Enter Free
August 3, 2021 @ 1pm EST
TFF Livestream & Giveaway Contest Drawing
August 25, 2021 @ 1pm EST
TFF Book Giveaway Contest Is Announced & Opened To Enter Free
And so we will be doing a monthly livestream, via Facebook Live, and in that brief time I will share news for upcoming book reviews and RW Cases or other creations, as well as finish each session with a drawing to choose a winner for a free giveaway contest.
What did I just say?!
Well, yeah, every month there will be a free to enter TFF Giveaway Contest taking place the week before the livestream.
I love reading, and TFF will be spreading the love!
The prizes will get better and better – wait until you see this month’s contest! – and most often there will be a choice for the winner (or winners, when we mix it up) to choose from so that if we are giving away books you can hopefully get something you do not have.
Quite a few brilliant authors are interested in writing book reviews on all sorts of fiction.
I spoke briefly last week on Elizabeth Yoo’s upcoming reviews of 1960’s Italian fiction that she will blow us away with, but so much more than that is on the horizon, and since I love almost every type of fiction out there, from horror and sci-fi to historical fiction, there will always be a fun variety to peruse.
So in this site’s NEWS section I will post a TFF Quarterly ANNOUNCEMENT SCHEDULE and I will feature them in a pulldown from the site menu under NEWS too.
What is coming up?
Well, besides the monthly contests, I will pick a book of the month that either was or is going to be reviewed during the livestream – a teaser, if you will – and I would like to start some Q/A time too (maybe not every time), but I will play that by ear. I love to live in the moment, so we will see where things take us.
Coming up next in book reviews…
In no particular order, except that CD’s NIGHT SHIFT by Stephen King is almost certainly next, here are the book-newcomers to The Forgotten Fiction magazine:
NIGHT SHIFT by Stephen King – Cemetery Dance Gift Edition
Ready Player One By Ernest Cline – Lettered Edition By Curious King Books
Later By Stephen King – Numbered Edition By Hard Case Crime
A Scanner Darkly By Philip K. Dick – Suntup Editions Numbered and Artist Editions
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – Suntup Editions Numbered and Artist Editions
More Books by Michael Crichton – requests are open, folks!
The End Of Eternity By Isaac Asimov (and pictures of a rare first edition)
The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War Of The Worlds, all By H.G. Wells – all Suntup Edition’s Limited Numbered
Killer Come Back To Me the unpublished Ray Bradbury book celebrating Bradbury’s 100th birthday by Hard Case Crime
There will be many books that pop up and wedge there way in between the ones above, but these are some of the fiction titles, young and old, to look forward to.
Branching off of both The Forgotten Fiction and my fledgling production company, press and PR agency Rune Works Productions Ltd. are the literary creations crafted by hand in my woodshop, like the TFF Rune Works Book Cases.
Call them traycases, slipcases, or whatever else you want, but do not call them mass produced haha.
These are beloved creations that I have hand crafted for my own library, art to hold my most precious art.
I am busy working on these RW Rare Book Cases:
A one-of-a-kind SILENCE OF THE LAMBS 2021 ARC case for the winner of the Unofficial Fans Of Suntup group’s contest, Kyle – this will be a 1 / 1 and like nothing anyone has ever seen
SECRET Case Project [hint: horror and Ania Ahlborn]
CARRIE 1st Edition case
FAHRENHEIT 451 case
The Gunslinger case
The Long Walk case
“The Bachman Books” case
“Gunslinger” Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction cases
A I of I creation customized for an issue of Astounding Fiction from 1953
Startling Mystery 1967 and 1969 Case
Fight Club cases, with a strip of cartoon film?
A Scanner Darkly case for the first edition of Philip K. Dick’s classic
Revival Us First Edition for signed copies
End Of Watch Us First Edition for signed copies
If It Bleeds Us First Edition for signed copies
The End Of Eternity Isaac Asimov case
And even a non-book case for a rare Star Wars Lego piece!
There are a couple of cases I want to remain a secret for now.
These are some ambitious projects that I have undertaken and some will be ready to fly in the near future, while others may take a year or more to develop (some have already crossed into this realm).
These are handmade and planned and collaborated on with usually one person, me, or a very few others, at times.
That takes time.
But I love to make them and I love to see their purpose fulfilled as the books join with them, and much as time is one of our most precious commodities, up there with family and health, I take my time to ensure the quality I feel all of my work, from my written works to my web-made to my hand-made works all are the most they can be.
Book Review The Gap: Fort Indiantown by John Witherow soars to extraordinary heights as an impactful work of historical fiction.
The Gap: Fort Indiantown is a visceral tale invoking the love of flying helicopters and the sense of life’s adventure pitted against the horrors of war in two places: Vietnam and the ‘War On Drugs.’
Here is the story synopsis, and the review continues below it.
A childhood fantasy fulfilled, a lifelong goal accomplished.
Fresh from rotary-wing flight school, 22-year-old Lieutenant Mark Ashford arrives for his first duty assignment at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, wanting nothing more than to master the art of flight. But he learns quickly that he’s in the awkward position of overseeing pilots with vastly superior skills and experience. Mark is persistently thwarted by one of these men―Vietnam veteran Nick Trent―who displays no regard for authority or convention, or even for Mark’s own personal safety. Resolved to learn more about his belligerent subordinate, Mark uncovers a decades-old secret from the Vietnam War―a brutal helicopter assault on innocent villagers. At the same time, he is tasked with supporting the DEA with aerial reconnaissance in search of a hidden cache of marijuana. Mark befriends a 16-year-old boy conscripted by the growers into the illicit venture. As he struggles to prevent the boy from drifting deeper into the crevices of the drug world, Mark is torn by his conflicting allegiances and risks his dream of becoming a master pilot.
THE GAP is a coming-of-age story that poses questions about the wisdom of the current drug war while employing themes from another lost war.
Notes:
Page Count: 518
About The Author: John Witherow is a former platoon leader and helicopter pilot of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard and an attorney sensitive to the challenges of the American criminal justice system. He lives in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Wendi, who is also an avid reader.
The following article on The Gap: Fort Indiantown is *Spoiler-ful*, but any spoilers will be limited to vague references of the plot.
From the opening lines, John Witherow grips readers tightly with a tale of innocent life, ignorant of war, suffering a harsh fate.
It is clear the characters feel with such emotion that it breaks them down at times.
And the dreadful scenario of a small village in Vietnam, enveloped by the Vietnam War, is written from such a unique point of view that the poetical beauty of the setting directly opposes the short, stark results that leave the reader rattled.
Witherow reveals the dichotomy of war, from the ground, in just a few pages.
The novel shifts from the Vietnam War to June 20, 1990 and young Second Lieutenant Ashford arriving to take command as an Army National Guard platoon leader and helicopter pilot at Muir Army Airfield in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania.
He is many years younger than his contentious fellow platoon members.
The dialogue is utterly realistic and shapes the readers’ impression of each character nicely so that you can hear their voices as they grapple with their new, young, unwanted boss.
Each character has their own past that is, for the veterans, irrevocably tied to the war they participated in.
And so the present is not exclusive from the past but molded by it in myriad ways.
The contemporary examination of the Vietnam Veterans who have gotten caught up in drugs and the ongoing war in the US on drugs, highlights much of the concerns and damage caused by the ‘War On Drugs’ itself and the many nuances in the laws that are worth examining for their impact of thousands, if not millions of lives.
Justice is not depicted as clear cut in The Gap: Fort Indiantown.
Often, it muddies the waters surrounding the lives of those that have no choice but to continue living on and face laws that are often as unclear as the orders that were carried out in the Vietnam War, despite the sense of morality that is felt in the text.
As the protagonist Lt. Ashford uncovers evidence of a horrid massacre that occurred at the hands of US armed forces in Vietnam, the already intriguing read becomes enamoring.
The Gap: Fort Indiantown is an innovative and powerful work of historical fiction.
P.S. If You Want To Know A Little More About How The Forgotten Fiction Is Different & Our Mission . . .
We are really trying to achieve two main goals here:
To bolster every author who puts out a work of fiction long after the initial buzz that accompanied its release. This is something that is usually left to an expensive public relations manager or company and even with all of their powers of marketing / PR are limited in where they can place the book months after its launch. This includes limited edition and small press publications, like Suntup Editions, that are also reviewed for their physical beauty, as well as the work’s literary art and often illustrations, so long as the initial work has been out 60 days.
We love books of fiction! And as readers we have too little time to read ALL of the books that fall onto our tentative To-Read List. The Forgotten Fiction hopes that with our Yea or Nay stamp, we can definitively give our unbiased opinion to you as a recommendation that may or may not move a book from the stack to your Must-Read List.
