Book Review: His Personal Reich by L. Salt

Before I move on with the review, I’ve had this one waiting for a while but circumstances have meant it hasn’t gone up till now and so I want to apologise unreservedly to the author L. Salt for the wait.

Okay before we get going, I want to tell you a little bit about the author, L. Salt is an author based in the UK, born in Belarus and having spent time in the Ukraine and Russia before coming to live in England. She earned her Masters Degree at the St. Petersburg University of Culture and Arts in Art Expertise. She published her debut novella ‘His Personal Reich’ which I will be reviewing today on April 2018 (via Crazy Ink Publishing). So that’s just a little bit about L. Salt and if you want to find out more you can check out this interview I did with her. Make sure to also check out her website and show support by following her on Facebook and Twitter.

His Personal Reich blends genres exceptionally well, history, thriller, science fiction and action and combined with great skill to create something that’s interesting and engaging and doesn’t rely greatly on the narrative conventions of any one genre too heavily. I do have to say that when dealing with Nazis or Neo-Nazis things can get a bit predictable, I mean they are among the stock cultural bad guys for over 70 years but frankly I think L. Salt managed to use them well without being beholden to too much of what is to be expected.

The story itself moved quickly but wasn’t rushed, it just had a nice pace to it that worked especially well since the story was a novella and as a result is shorter than a conventional novel. L. Salt manages to weave a lot into a relatively short book, and deals with action and conflict with remarkable skill and depth, something that even seasoned authors can struggle with.

I enjoy the thriller genre in particular because of its twists and the layers of narrative within the story and L. Salt managed to capture the best or at least my favourite part of the genre here by building in twists that were surprising. I could easily see myself reading this more than once and still being deeply engaged in the plot.

I mentioned pace above, and despite some rough parts, due in part to the length of the part I was engaged by the writing, things felt frenetic at times but when dealing with extremes like Nazi’s it makes a lot of sense.

Lastly, I enjoyed the characters, Ardrea Zissman (the main character) deals with her life being turned upside down far better than I would and she’s just solid and real on the page. I also liked the journalist character, Leon Callais, I admire his tireless search for the story, although as a journalist myself I might be a little biased.

So just to sum up, L. Walt’s debut Novella ‘His Personal Reich’ is a rich, interesting story that’s fast paced and engaging. It’s not perfect but I still couldn’t put it down. So with that in mind, I think I’ll give it a 4/5 and if you want to grab yourself a copy then head on over to Amazon.

First Published on: https://offtherecordblog.org/

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