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Blood of the Reich: A Novel
Blood of the Reich: A Novel
Blood of the Reich: A Novel
Audiobook15 hours

Blood of the Reich: A Novel

Written by William Dietrich

Narrated by Robert Fass and Ilyana Kadushin

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

In Blood of the Reich, critically acclaimed and bestselling author William Dietrich weaves two stories separated by place and time yet deeply intertwined by the dangerous secret they share.

On the eve of World War II, explorer Kurt Raeder receives orders from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to set out from Berlin in search of a legendary energy source hidden among the mountains of Tibet—one that could bring victory to the Nazis. Only one man can stop Raeder and his team of SS officers: wealthy American zoologist Benjamin Hood. Together with aviatrix Beth Calloway, he must race to the Buddhist kingdom before the tides of history run red with blood.

Decades later, in present-day Seattle, software publicist Rominy Pickett is saved from certain death by a mysterious journalist who claims to know the truth about her family. Rominy’s history and courage hold the key to defeating, once and for all, the evil forces again on the rise.

Moving from the remote woods of the Pacific Northwest to the underground laboratories of the CERN supercollider in France and Switzerland and to the mystical temples of Tibet, Blood of the Reich is a white-knuckle thrill ride filled with adventure, authentic historical detail, and unforgettable characters. This is William Dietrich at his very best.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateJun 28, 2011
ISBN9780062072290
Author

William Dietrich

William Dietrich is the author of fourteen novels, including six previous Ethan Gage titles—Napoleon's Pyramids, The Rosetta Key, The Dakota Cipher, The Barbary Pirates, The Emerald Storm, and The Barbed Crown. Dietrich is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, historian, and naturalist. A winner of the PNBA Award for Nonfiction, he lives in Washington State.

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Reviews for Blood of the Reich

Rating: 3.468749953125 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

32 ratings5 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When Rominy Pickett is tackled in a grocery store parking lot just seconds before a bomb explosion disintegrates her car, little does she know she is about to embark on the adventure of her life. Jake Barrow, news reporter, has been working on the scoop of his journalistic career and uncovers an unusual tale involving a man named Benjamin Hood who in 1938, along with a daring young female aviatrix named Beth Calloway, flew on a secret mission to Tibet in order to head off the Germans in the search for the secret location of the legendary Shambhala. Jake’s research uncovers some pretty colorful facts, one being that Rominy is Hood’s great granddaughter and she might be inheriting a fortune in treasure if he can convince her that his story is real, and that she is not who she thought she was. Orphaned as a baby, Rominy Pickett’s real name is Hood, and her life is turned upside down as Jake takes her on an adventurous journey that will have the duo playing Sherlock and Watson. Can Rominy and Jake uncover the mysterious clues Benjamin Hood left for his only remaining heir many decades ago? A safe deposit box with a white scarf, three gold coins, and a decapitated finger will point them in the direction of nothing but trouble as they piece together one man's incredible story.Alternating scenes ricochet from the Himalayan peaks of Tibet to the Cascade Mountains of Washington state. World War II era nasty German Nazi's traipse up and down snow covered valleys led by an enchanting female Tibetan monk as they scour the landscape for the lost city of Shambhala. Known for it’s mysterious healing powers and shamanistic wisdom, the Germans have been sent to find Shambhala by Hitler in hopes of uncovering the truth that the Tibetan people are the purest of the Aryan races. In the present, Rominy and Jake have a clever fingerprint shaped treasure map to follow as they stumble through the forests near Seattle, and literally fall into an old mine where they step over a skeleton with an interesting pocket full of mysteries. Dietrich once again creates an action adventure novel to top the charts. Blood of the Reich is a concoction of mystery, romance, exotic locales, archaeological wonders, and a Pandora’s box of chaos and calamity. His usual style of blending history and suspense with a dash of humor never lets this reader down. Two thumbs up for darn good yarn that proved to be nothing but fun!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    College professor turned novelist William Dietrich weaves history and Illuminati-style Nazi mythology together in his take on how physics and magic might have met in World War II and again today. The result is an often engaging period piece electrified by the sharply-drawn German officer Kurt Raeder that is often interrupted by an awkwardly voiced, and even more awkwardly named, Rominy Pickett, who has just been blindsided by her connection to something bigger. The characters and settings provide plenty of fertile conflicts on which to riff: past vs.present, politics vs. religion, conqueror vs. native, and yes, man vs.woman. But disappointingly, Dietrich only displays a knack for the "Indiana Jones" historical adventure motif. Nazi-era Tibet crackles and hisses while the contemporary Seattle-based romantic action comedy flops. In the end of this stand-alone novel we are left with an uneven but quick read combining some truly taut, vivid renderings along with others that are simply paint-by-numbers. Despite the missteps, "Blood of the Reich" is ultimately propelled sufficiently by the seductive, wide-eyed belief that some legends and fantasies might be tangible, explainable truth if we simply uncover their secrets.The review copy of this book was obtained from the publisher via the Amazon Vine Program.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    The characters were cartoon caricatures, the writing was atrocious. One example: "...walking into the technology like sperm penetrating the gigantic egg of this vast, bulky machine." I won't spoil it for anyone who wants to read the book, but clunky, silly figures of speech like this abound. The plot is one of the over-the-top pseudo-scientific genus, which can be fun reading. This one could have been, had the author bothered to staff it with somewhat realistic actors.I guess one could say that I really didn't care for this one.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nazis in Tibet--it should have been a winner I've been a fan of William Dietrich since way back when he published Ice Reich. When I read the description of Blood of the Reich, I was hopeful that he was returning to some of his strongest subject matter. Alas, while there is some fun to be had with Blood of the Reich, I have to admit that in my optimism I was disappointed. The story is told in two times through three narrative threads, two in the past and one in the present. The two narrators of the past are Nazi Kurt Raeder and American Benjamin Hood. The two had met on a joint scientific expedition to Tibet years earlier, but when Raeder's true colors were revealed, they became sworn enemies. What true colors, you ask? Well, there was a woman and "Raeder wanted one to dominate, to hear her cries..." The man's a Nazi; of course he's a sadistic murderous pig. `Nuff said. As for Benjamin Hood, he's struggled to overcome his privileged upbringing, and he can't refuse when his country comes to him for help. The Nazi's are returning to Tibet, and the U.S. wants to know what they're up to. In present day Seattle, we are introduced to protagonist Rominy Pickett, who, as the novel opens, is trying to evade the good-looking but overly persistent creep stalking her through the frozen foods section. Rominy describes herself like this, "I'm a publicist. I spend my days promoting bug-laden software that will be obsolete six months after we sell it. I'm like Dilbert." She's an everywoman that gets sucked into the adventure of her life after her supermarket stalker saves her from being blown to bits and whisks her away from everything she has ever known. Rather into go into a great deal more detail about the convoluted plot, I'll simply say that the Nazi's were searching for the mythological city of Shambala, and legends of a secret power source found there. All events from the novel spring from that basic premise, and it's not a bad jumping off place. Unfortunately, I found the execution to be significantly flawed. Where to start? Let's start with the relationships. They were all extreme. It was all love or hate in this book, and characters tended to be cartoonishly black or white. There were several romantic relationships depicted, all fairly ridiculous, though none more so than the contemporary romance, which was laughable, with dialogue like, "Can't you tell? I've fallen in love with you?" spoken a day after meeting. Ugh. Major plot twists were broadly telegraphed, leading up to Scooby-Doo-ish revelations. And while Dietrich dressed his mystical MacGuffin up in a thin veneer of science, ("Some of the Nazis believed in an energy source called the Black Sun, buried at the center of the earth. Woo-woo, right? Except not entirely different from our ideas of dark energy, an energy so mysterious we can't even detect it.") he never sold me on the basic plot. It was just too far-fetched for me. And I might have forgiven a lot of the above, had he pulled off a powerhouse ending, but the end of the novel was probably the most disappointing part of all. It all just sort of fizzled, with no firm resolution. God, I hope he's not setting up a sequel. William Dietrich is a fine writer. His prose is above average for a thriller. I know that he can create compelling characters and plots. But somehow he missed the boat this time out. Here's hoping the next novel will be more satisfying.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Blood of the ReichWilliam DietrichTrade PaperbackUncorrected Proof432 pages Publisher: Harper Expected Release Date: June 28, 2011 ISBN: 978-0061989186Sometimes a book is published at exactly the right moment in time and Blood of the Reich may have hit the jackpot in the way of timing. By that I mean that it may eventually sell a lot of copies due to its timely publication in correlation to the World War II Nazi stories that currently inundate the news. The Associated Press published an emotional article this past week about the grandchildren of high-profile members of the Nazi Party. Also, this week, an Ohio autoworker, John Demjanjuk, was found guilty of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder, one for each of the Jews exterminated during the six months that he worked as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland. This may well be the last Holocaust war crime to capture the public’s attention. The timing may ultimately also help sales of Blood of the Reich.I enjoy historical fiction and World War II is especially fascinating to me, a child of a WWII veteran. Throw in some action and a little suspense and you have something that piques my interest. However, while Blood of the Reich has its moments, especially the intriguing pre-WWII story line, it fails to pull all the sub-plots back together into a neatly-bundled conclusion. Some suspense/action writers (Steve Berry and James Rollins, for instance) have the remarkable talent of putting us at the edge of our seats and then, as the story concludes, drawing all the sub-plot arcs together into a compact, complete, and satisfying climax. While Dietrich tells a good story and makes a descent attempt at bringing it all together I think it could have been done much better. Indeed, the closer to the finale I got the more hurried it felt. I suspect this had more to do with publication pressure rather than actual writing skill but since I have never read anything by Mr. Dietrich before this is only a guess. However, it felt to me like a book that was forced too soon out of the writer’s hands. On the other hand, perhaps Blood of the Reich might have been more impactful and my opinion less negative had the story not already been told so well by Spielberg, Lucas, and company in the Indian Jones saga. Still, for the die-hard WWII suspense fanatics out there, you should probably check this one out for yourselves.3 ½ stars out of 5The AlternativeSoutheast Wisconsin