Archangel is a two-part novel. First one gives a fine if bleak picture of Russia today, where everything is for sale, if only for survival sake, much to the chagrin of the sellers. This part is quite entertaining, with well-defined characters (those puffy academics) and atmosphere to boot. The second part of the novel-which should deliver the punch and is only able to deliver embarassed laughters-fails, and Lord does it fails, to convince the reader. Now imagine a new Stalin, looking, talking, frowning, grinning remarkably like the original one, a man who has lived all his life in the remotest of places, mimicking dialectics by having learned by heart his old master's speeches and writings, still able to pick off with an old gun the best of a small contingent of Red Army attack troops... The fact that Stalin's return were to be welcomed again by some segment of the population of modern Russia is not in question, he sure would be, as Hitler would be, as slavery would be, there is always those who regret the tyrant or the tyranny, what is in question here is the conditions in which this new Frankenstein is created, those are ex-cru-ci-a-ting-ly unbelievable. The novel falls apart real bad at the end. Read the novel's first part, it is very good stuff indeed; stop reading when Kelso and O'Brian take off for Archangel. Then go buy some other book.
