Reviews

Where God Does Not Walk paints an incredibly vivid picture of the absurdity of war.

We see most of this through the eyes and from the perspective of our main protagonist German soldier, Gregor Reinhardt. Gregor is around 19 years old and is in the trenches, fighting every day in truly horrific bombardments in order to survive World War One and return home.

Very early on there’s an explosion where several soldiers are killed and injured, but Reinhardt believes there’s much more to the incident and that not all of the blame lies at the feet of his soldier, Sattler. Sattler is severely injured and ultimately ends up the scapegoat, being shot by a firing squad to ultimately silence him and the truth from coming out.

The grim conditions of trench warfare jump off the pages, McCallin does this subtly nad skillfully with the descriptions almost peppered across the pages like machine gunfire. The soldliers, most of whom are incredibly young, naive and clueless of what warfare really entails are, when they trying not to get shot or blown up are trying to fend off trench foot, trench mouth for example. There’s regular references to lice living in Reinhardt’s uniform.

He started, feeling something icy brush up his spine, and became aware of the lice crawling around his groin.

Page 21

At the same time you get a sense of the normality and simple things the men craved like decent, edible food.

They all stopped to look, agape at the riches. Flour, sugar, cheese, rounds of bread, bottles of wine….

Page 171

the rattle and the hum of the trenches continued as men ate, read, slept, stood watch, washed and shave, played skat…’

Page 211

Just because a senior officer is issuing orders, and the junior ranks follow them, that ultimately those actions end in bloodshed, maiming and death, all for the glory of war from both sides. Men are described as cattle, as disposable as that.

And the stench. Blood. Bowel. Urine. The reek of men turned inside out. Such a butchery of men.

Page 397

The novel looks at the early and unorthodox ‘treatment’ of shellshock and conveys a strong sense of the major injuries that men were left with even if they did survive until the end of the war.

What transpires in the book is a network of fairly senior officers conspiring beyond the war, a gang of revolutionaries of a kind. They will stop at nothing to try to create a future and prosperous Germany they envisage. Reinhardt is confused and crossed as he tries to work out who’s committed what crimes and murders and why.

You champion Gregor as the book continues, and want him to be ahead of the trouble – the visible and invisible trouble heading his way. Without giving too much away in case there’s a 5th Reinhardt novel, I was glad of the ending even though at 420 pages I felt that the novel could have been 50-70 pages shorter and still packed the memorable punch it does.

It’s a three star read for me, and thank you again to No Exit Press for the preview copy.

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4.0

Gregor Reinhardt puts his investigative skills to the test after one of his comrades, Sattler, is accused of blowing up some men that were on a mission, and although he was thought to have committed suicide after this he’s found alive and his punishment is to be shot dead, like traitors were. Gregor isn’t doesn’t believe that Sattler is guilty of this crime and he sets out to investigate just what truly happened to those men.

This is my first book by Luke McCallin but it won’t be my last, I loved Gregor’s character and I need to read the rest of this series (this is a prequel). This thrilling novel set in the last few months of WW1 that’s engulfed in your typical warfare scenes; hospitals, trenches, battlefields, camps. You can tell that McCallin has really done his research as the descriptions used to describe the conditions of that time were so convincing, and the mindset of the solders would be what you’d think with their general attitudes and overall wanting for this war to be over.

McCallin did not shy away from writing about the brutal elements of war and the toll it takes on everyone involved, regardless of what position they may have – a simple villager, a trench digger, a general, the loved ones waiting for the solders to return. Each type of person portrayed in this novel was executed flawlessly, you can’t help but feel right along with them. Anger, sadness, short bursts of joy, despair, anxiety, and helplessness were all emotions I felt while reading this book and connecting with the characters.

Thank you so much to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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