A Sense of War

Fanzine at http://www.knightwriter.org/

A Sense of War #1

Reviewed by Kathryn A on 2001-03-12

A Rat Patrol/Sentinel crossover novel by Lee

I am not familiar with The Rat Patrol, but since I'm rather fond of WWII novels, and I'm not averse to Parallel Universe stories putting Jim and Blair into a different setting, I plunged into this happily and wasn't lost. This was pretty good. This is a What-If story, taking the premise of "What if Jim and Blair had been born long enough ago that they were involved in WWII?" It doesn't go into the backstory much; the author is more interested in the interaction between the characters in The Rat Patrol and Jim and Blair. Not being familiar with the Rat Patrol (like, I've seen one episode) I couldn't really tell if the Rat Patrol characters were in character, but I was neither lost nor bored, which certainly seems to me that the author was handling them well enough. I like crossovers where the author isn't spending all her time explaining things; just show it like it is, and have the characters react. There were some good uses of Jim's senses, though Blair didn't get to shine a lot. The problem with having so many characters, it's hard to give everyone equal time. One could argue that this was more a Rat Patrol story than a Sentinel story, simply by sheer weight of numbers, but one thing I like about crossovers is getting to see Our Heros from someone else's point of view, which this one certainly had.

A Sense Of War #2: Desert Heat

Reviewed by Kathryn A on 2001-03-12

(A Rat Patrol/Sentinel crossover novel by Lee)

This continues the story begun in A Sense Of War (best read that one first) and goes further with it. Interesting Developments Ensue (but I can't say more for fear of spoilers). I liked the characterisation here, where a few characters have to think about what really matters to them, and make some hard choices. Mind, the ones doing the soul-searching weren't Jim or Blair -- again, not everyone manages to get the spotlight (though it was cool watching Blair and Moffit go ga-ga over the ruins they found...) Again, probably more Rat Patrol than Sentinel, but, again, I still enjoyed it despite not being a Rat Patrol fan.