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Sarah1984
May 05, 2016Sarah1984 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!! 31/7 - Even more of a page turner than Child 44! I loved this, so much so that I stayed up till 2 am two nights in a row feverishly reading, unable to stop turning the pages until I fell asleep with the book in my hands. I had forgotten how irritating and occasionally confusing I find Smith's choice of how to format and punctuate his dialogue. Instead of placing his dialogue within a pair of speech marks, as most writers do, Smith has to be different so he italicises his dialogue and neglects the speech marks altogether. Every so often I'd mistake dialogue for internal monologue because italics usually signify internal thoughts. Fortunately the pacing and plot successfully overcome that irritation. I was expecting the rescue of Zoya to be the exciting climax of the book, so I was quite surprised to find I still had over 100 pages to go and it appeared that the story was done with Zoya. In my review for Child 44 I discussed the hate the book made me feel for Russia/Soviet Russia. I didn't feel the hate for a whole country quite as strongly while reading The Secret Speech. It was more about the individuals this time. I couldn't help but despise the prisoners who tortured Leo. Even though I understood their reasons, after what they did to him I couldn't find any sympathy for their plight. Yes, he did horrific, brutal things to people, but what choice did he have. If Leo hadn't been the torturer, if he had refused, someone else would have happily stepped into his place (as was shown in Child 44 when Leo couldn't continue with one of the interrogations when the doctor was injecting the castor oil into the prisoner) and he and his family would have been taken away to be tortured themselves. When the government is like the government of Soviet Russia was (still is), one man rebelling isn't going to change anything. All that's going to happen is that the torturers will have four more victims (Leo, Raisa, Anna, and Stepan as the whole family, maybe even some unfortunate neighbours, would have been punished for Leo's rebellion), the gulags four more prisoners, if they even made it that far. When the reign of terror is so pervasive all you can do is try to survive and keep your family safe. I'm looking forward the final book in the trilogy.