“The first streaks of dawn were
curdling the eastern sky.”
That is a great line from William Chamberlain’s 1964
novel. There are many such lines, but this tale is somewhat of a curiosity. It
reads as if two authors were at work here, one skilled, and one, well, not so
much.
There are three loooong chapters of such superficial
one-dimensional characterization I find it hard to believe it was written by
the same person.
As on the plus side of the ledger, the vast bulk deals
with a grimly detailed uncomfortable desert crossing and the believable deterioration
of men under pressure.
If this was all this story was it’d be an easy A for
any reader, but those out-of-place three chapters mark this one as rough
territory.
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