Book Review - No Dawn For Men

No Dawn For Men - James LePore and Carlos Davis (2013) - "MI-6, knowing that something potentially devastating is developing, recruits scholar and novelist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien to travel to Germany to find out what this might be, using the German popularity of his children’s novel THE HOBBIT as cover. Joining him there is MI-6 agent Ian Fleming, still years away from his own writing career but posing as a Reuters journalist. Together, Tolkien and Fleming will get to the heart of the secret – and they will face a fury greater than even their prodigious imaginations considered possible."

So imagine this - take Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", Fleming's James Bond and stir it with an Indiana Jones mixing spoon.  That's what you've got here.  The first fun part is that so much of this is based on fact.  Fleming did work with British intelligence during the war and Tolkien was approached to do it but declined.  The Nazis were rather focused on supernatural power objects (that's what figures at the center of this book).  So you have some truly rich ground to have a little fun.

And the book is fun.  Lepore and Davis take us on a thrill ride that draws very heavily on its three inspiration sources.  Here's the key, it would work every bit as well WITHOUT the historical pieces added in.  It just wouldn't be as much fun.

Here's the down side.  I've read most of Tolkien's popular fiction and all of Fleming's James Bond.  By the time I was a third of the way into the book I knew the ending.  In fact if you're a Bond fan and you DON'T see the ending you show probably hand in your Berretta and Walther PPK.  Send everything else directly to Q Branch.  I was enjoying the book so much I wanted to be wrong.  But I wasn't.  At least they avoided the urge to quote the book at the end.

So I'm torn on this one.  In the end, it's just too much fun to let pass by.  Popcorn reading at its best.  Once you start munching you just won't be able to stop.

Rating - *** Worth A Look

"No Dawn For Men" hits bookshelves December 3, 2013