Review of A Season of Thunder

[Kutloano Makhuvhela]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "A Season of Thunder" by Alex Gerrick.]

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5 out of 5 stars

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A Season of Thunder by Alex Gerrick is a novel that is based on real events. What I mean by that is that it is a novel, but the events are real, and so are the characters and places. Only a few bits here and there are fictitious. This made the novel sets itself apart on many fronts. It is raw, gripping, intriguing, revealing, shocking, and flowing. It awakens emotions you never thought you had. It tells a story of a man trying to make sense of a traumatising event that occurred in his childhood, only to be forced to go further back and touch on what happened to his parents during the Second World War and later on.

Alex is an Australian man who’s driven to uncover the truth about what happened to a woman during the Second World War. This woman was heavily assaulted, and she lives with this scar even now, years after the conclusion of that war. Something just compels Alex to take up the baton and chase the truth. But it is later revealed that he has a history of his own that he is trying to come to terms with. Firstly, when he was a young boy, around four years old, he was shot. While going around Europe in the 2020s, when the world was gripped by the coronavirus, Alex learns scary stuff that happened in the war that involves his father.

Anton, a Yugoslav man, finds himself in a world that is teetering at the brink of chaos. There are many forces both from within and without that want to tear up his country. Not only that, but they want to change it to something unrecognisable, so he is forced to join in a fight. But he doesn’t go to the frontline, exactly, but works in the intelligence field with the British. What he is doing is so dangerous that with one wrong move, he will get killed, not only himself but his loved ones too. Is what he’s doing good and for the benefit of his country? Is he fighting a just war? Will Alex be proud of what he learns about Anton?

Read this big book to know the answers to the questions. I enjoyed reading it. I took my time with every sentence, every paragraph, and every chapter because of how captivating the writing was. The author’s penmanship was something commendable. I did not feel like I was reading words written down but rather felt like I was sitting with the author himself beside me, narrating the story to me. Every word was meticulously chosen to convey the message. The reading was flowing and was consistent throughout. I found the pace fast from the beginning to the end. It never let me down. This told me the author was serious about gripping me as a reader.

The book was filled with many plots. At first, it read as a simple investigative novel, but then it read as a historical war novel that threw you deep into the world’s deadliest wars. This took my breath for a while. The transition from one genre to another was done so seamlessly that I never noticed at first. This was because of the author’s skill in hiding what’s important in front of you. The characters came alive. They were bubbly and didn’t feel like they belonged to the pages but to real life. Characters like Ilsa, Max, Vuka, and Anton stood out for me. Their complexities made them relatable. They were not perfect, like most people. They had to make some decisions with which I never agreed, but because I knew from where they were coming, I understood.

There is nothing I disliked about the book. I didn’t know what I expected when approaching it, but whatever that was, it was met and greatly exceeded. That’s how good it was. Yes, sometimes I found the vulgarity glaring and unsettling. But this showed me how intense the conditions of war were. The errors I found were minor and didn’t affect my reading or the quality of the book at all. This told me that it was professionally edited.

With all I have said above, I have no choice other than to give this book a rating of five out of five stars. I strongly recommend it to people who love memoirs, investigative novels, thrillers, historical novels and war novels. It encompasses all in it. What I loved most about it was how educational it was. Many W.W.II stories have been told throughout the decades, but none like this and certainly not from this P.O.V. It compelled me to do more research about the country of Croatia. I realised there is a lot I don’t know about it, especially during the war years.

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A Season of Thunder
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[Kibet Hillary]

I am glad that the author manages to perfectly interweave many themes into a compelling story that views the Second World War from an angle that has not been explored much before. Many thanks for the informative review, @Kutloano Makhuvhela.

[Onyemuwa-dave]

This is a fantastic and insightful review. You've captured the essence of "A Season of Thunder" perfectly, highlighting its raw emotional power and seamless genre blending (I don't see that everyday). Your comments about the characters, especially Anton, and the educational aspect of the book are spot on. Thank you for sharing your experience with such clarity and enthusiasm. I will love to give the book a try.

[Gerry Steen]

This review has captivated me. I enjoy reading historical fiction, and this story will be one of the books I read. I want to know the stories that Alex, the Australian, and Anton, the Yugoslavian have to share about the atrocities of World War 2. Thank you for this thorough review.