book review the diamond eye by kate quinn

Too much technical detail about guns and ammunition which I felt myself skimming. I felt the descriptions of the war were so vivid it was gripping. I learned so much about the skill that it took to become a sniper, how incredibly hard it is to perfect a shot from bunkers, bush, trees and buildings. I loved her description and portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt, what a strong, incredible woman she was! The characters!! Ms Quinn fully develops the characters of Mila, her partner, Kostia and her first husband, Alexei. She was also a part of a delegation of Russians who came to the US to try to convince Roosevelt to set up another front. However Russians fought hard and lost many thousands in their fight against Hitler and fascism, they were our allies.įrom the blurb you know that Mila was a mother, a university student studying history, a marksman and then finally a soldier/sniper for the Russian army. It’s hard in the current political and world climate for me to feel much sympathy for Russia.

Quinn states that almost all of the characters and their actions came straight from Mila’s personal memoir. This book reads more like a biography of Lyudmila Pavlichenko “Mila” than historical fiction.

I love Kate Quinn’s novels, her prose is wonderful and her research is meticulous. But when an old enemy from Mila's past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.īased on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, of a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever. Still reeling from war wounds and devastated by loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC-until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper-a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kyiv, wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son-but Hitler's invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. The New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history's deadliest female sniper.

Book review the diamond eye by kate quinn