If you ever find yourself in a situation where you feel like you have to go on a diet but you can't stop eating ... read this book. It gets morbid by the page. I had to stop eating my chicken pie when I was going through the part when one of the characters had his pinky cut but not all way because when the torture was done it was left hanging by a skin (never mind that the chicken pie wasn't that good but that's a different story).
The prose was simple and direct. I think that was what made it all the more disturbing. You won't have a hard time wrapping your head around the words trying to figure out what the author meant because every description is literal and blunt. You might learn a person can cringe more ways than one.
What I didn't like about this book (other than reading about an officer grabbing an infant by the leg and bashing its head on a tree just because his mother wouldn't go into the pit) is that after about 80% of the story, the author decided to switch to first person narration. And not even all the way to the end. Just bits and pieces where one character is concerned. He wasn't even the main character until that chapter. That character was already introduced a few chapters back in third person but then all of a sudden MacMillan tells the story through this guy's point of view. It was disorienting to say the least.
All in all, I thought this was just another one of those historical fiction that only stood out because of its blunt approach.
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