Traitor: A Novel of World War II

Product Information

Traitor tells us the story of Tolya and Solovey, both of whom are fairly reluctant participants in this battle.

Traitor: A Novel of World War II by Amanda McCrina

Characters are killed off or abandoned after a few pages and then we’re supposed to feel something for them later, or at all (so much so that another Goodreads reviewer seemed more concerned with the fate of a cat than with named characters). The exploration of this complicated ethnic identity becomes one of the threads woven through the book in a world where Poles and Ukrainians are engaging in ethnic warfare and Tolya is caught between two worlds. Tolya lives in an area that is constantly passed back and forth between Soviet and German hands, and the Ukrainian nationalist movement and Polish resistance are at odds with each other and with whoever is in power at any given time.We also see quite a bit of the war and the effects of it, as it switches POVs, alternating between 1941 and 1944.

Traitor: A Novel of World War II eBook : McCrina, Amanda

I think if I went in expecting more of a focus no the history rather than the story, I would've enjoyed Traitor a lot more. At one point I ended up putting the book down to read the history of the city of Lwów on Wikipedia, which to me is a sign that the key players in the book weren't well explained. She was small and sunburned and bareheaded, with a scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and a short, stiff chestnut braid sticking out behind each ear. After the Soviet liberation of Lwow from Germany, the city remains a battleground between resistance fighters and insurgent armies, its loyalties torn between Poland and Ukraine.There are a lot of moral gray areas for the characters, and you can see them flounder and struggle with their ethics and morals. It is a story woven in broken threads of time with two voices, each revealing less than necessary until just the right time. It’s actually easier than you might think, because I wrote two separate novels and then spliced them together. They must have seen Zampolit Petrov’s body because there was a split second’s silence—weapons being unslung and aimed—then a spray of submachine-gun fire. There's Inej, an itinerant acrobat captured by slavers and sold to a brothel, now a spy for Kaz; the Grisha Nina, with the magical ability to calm and heal; Matthias the zealot, hunter of Grishas and caught in a hopeless spiral of love and vengeance with Nina; Wylan, the privileged boy with an engineer's skills; and Jesper, a sharpshooter who keeps flirting with Wylan.

Traitor | Amanda McCrina | FSG Books for Young Readers

An incredible reminder of the tragedy of war, for nations, for nature, for people, for boys and girls who just want to be normal kids.Even before the war, there had been fighting between the Ukrainian and Polish people living in that part of Eastern Europe. I definitely think Traitor will resonate in this current climate we’re in, not just on the surface political level, but [because] there’s always a need for stories about people trying to do the right thing, even when their circumstances are horrendous.

TRAITOR | Kirkus Reviews

I liked the interrogations, as they felt realistic, and I liked the humor in the dialogue, especially in Aleksey’s chapters when he is talking to Mykola. The story became more engaging as it went along and more of the context was filled in, and by the end of the book I think everyone will be looking forward to the next release in the series.There were old, yellowed timetables on the walls, and a dusty clock, with tall black Roman numerals and thin, scrolled black metal hands, that had run out one morning at 8:17. As mentioned, the dual POV works for this novel, and the two points of view we see are Tolya (who is in third person) and Aleksey (who is in first person. After shooting his unit’s political officer, he’s saved by Ukrainian freedom fighters, including squad leader Solovey.