Wednesday, April 26, 2017

The Prague Ultimatum

I’m not even sure how this book got on my Kindle. Someone else on my account must have ordered it, but given that I’ve been looking for books about The Czech Republic and Hungary, I decided to give The Prague Ultimatum a try. This is the first novel for James Silvester that has been reviewed in the blog, and he’s better known for Escape to Perdition.

The premise of this 2017 book is that the Czech Republic and Slovakia have been reunited under the charismatic leadership of Prime Minister Miraslava Svobodova. However, there’s a secret organization, best known as “The Institute” which is keen to see the reunified country be separated once again. Czechoslovakia is really a bit player in the power/greed conspiracy, but they been chosen as the sacrificial lamb to achieve the control of Europe by the Institute.


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What is interesting about this book is the way terrorism and ultra right racism is used to foment rebellion. There are actually some great speeches given by the primary characters on those topics. But, that’s as far as my favorable comments can go. I liked the protagonist, Captain Thomas Stone of the 4th Royal Tank Regiment, but I also found his wild mood and temper swings to be unbelievable. The other characters were inadequately developed. Finally, while I’m used to having to suspend my own sense of reality when reading crime and espionage novels, there’s a limit to how far that suspension can go. And I thought this one was just too much. I can’t give The Prague Ultimatum a favorable recommendation.

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