The best-selling military historical fiction series continues...
To win the war, hands will get dirty...
With the installment of Ulysses S. Grant as the head of the Union armies, plans have been put into place to dismantle the Confederate war machine once and for all. But, you can't fight decisive battles against evasive opponents that fade into the landscape and strike like lightening in the night.
A daring raid is devised to draw the Confederate cavalry into a winner take all showdown. The Union needs a group of soldiers just brazen enough to do it or die trying. Libby Prison's most recent escapee, Johannes Wolf, and his unit of misfits, might just be the ones to get the job done--if they don't kill each other first.
Wolf embarks on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines to set J. E. B. Stuart, the Knight of the Golden Spurs, off-kilter and force him on to the battlefield.
What might drive a gentleman soldier like J. E. B. Stuart mad?
Kidnapping his wife.
Can Wolf and company accomplish their mission? Or will they hang from the gallows as war criminals? Ride into the third installment of the popular Northern Wolf Series and experience fast-paced, hard-hitting historical fiction at its best!
Daniel is the award-winning author of The End Time Saga and the historical fiction Northern Wolf Series. Whether it’s a saber charge in the American Civil War or a gun battle between two rival bands surviving a hellish landscape, he is known for his ability to embed every page with fast-paced action, thrilling suspense, and gritty realism.
He is an avid traveler and physical fitness enthusiast with a deep passion for history. The works of George R.R. Martin, Steven Pressfield, Bernard Cornwell, Robert Jordan, and George Romero, have inspired his work. Although he is a Midwesterner for life, he's lived in Virginia long enough to consider it home.
He is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association, the Historical Novel Society, and the Military Writers Society of America.
The third book in this series takes the reader in a new direction. The first two books had placed fictional characters into historical situations flawlessly. I still am under the impression Wolf and his brigade fought at Gettysburg. Here the author took them and put them in a fictional story.
While that is always appropriate in military fiction, it causes a problem here. The basic premise of this series has been watching Wolf and his unit as it took part in the rich history of the Civil War. To then thrust them into a purely fictional story weakens the entire story. The reader of this series is left wondering why, with myriad calvary stories to tell, that one has to be invented.
As a reader, you are often required to use a suspension of disbelief to enjoy a story. This story went beyond that: Wolf selects a group of ten to accompany him and takes with him, two he hates. He takes two he nearly killed and who want him dead. There is no way possible this would happen in real life or in most fiction. The story lost any cohesion with this.
There are excellent sections in regards to Wade Hampton. There are well-written battle scenes. Daniel Greene really takes the reader back to the Civil War times. The brutality of the battlefield is accurately portrayed. Recommended to fans of the first two books of this series. Recommended to fans of Civil War military fiction.
Never a truer word was spoken. But this was war, and sometimes decisions have to be made in the moment, only to be regretted at leisure. If Johannes Wolf had not lied, then he may well have escaped the torture, but he would have just as likely died on Belle Isle — not that Libby Prison guaranteed his life.
For Wolf, the war was over, at least for now. All he had to do was survive or, if there was a chance, escape. But even if he were to escape Libby Prison then death awaited him – for he was impersonating an officer and that was a hanging offence regardless of whichever army you marched with…
From the desperate squalor of Libby Prison to a dangerous and secret mission behind enemy lines, Northern Blood (Northern Wolf Series, Book 3) by Daniel Greene is an enthralling story that grabs the reader from the opening sentence and does not let go until that fatal full stop.
The Northern Wolf Series by Daniel Greene is extraordinarily successful, and with the dramatic cliff hanger in Northern Hunt (Northern Wolf Series Book 2), I could not wait to find out where this story would take our brave protagonist, Johannes Wolf, next. When a series is such a page-turner, I am always slightly concerned that the author is going to run out of steam, that the story is going to lose momentum. I should have known better than to concern myself with such tedious trepidations, for Greene picks up where he left off, and he has presented his readers with a comprehensively brilliant book. This novel is packed with explosive action and unforgettable characters.
The narrative grabs hold of the reader and takes them on a journey through a war-torn country whose fields are soaked with the blood of its compatriots. The harrowing cries of a wounded horse and the desperate tears of a soldier who will never see his wife again are brought vividly back to life in all of its despondency. This is a story that is graphic in its depictions of battles fought, but it is also a spoken memorial of all the countless soldiers who died during the Overland Campaign of 1864. This attention to such penetrating and shocking detail gives the reader a harrowing front-row seat as the Union Army clashes with the Confederacy forces. The exhaustion of the soldiers, as well as their utter bewilderment as they try to bring comfort to their dying friends, certainly brought a tear to my eye. Greene demonstrates most ardently that there is nothing glamorous about war. This is a novel which, despite its strong sense of foreshadowing, cannot prepare the reader for the realities of what the characters in this book were to face.
Once again, we navigate the American Civil War with Johannes Wolf — a man who comes from nothing but finds a home in the Union Army. Wolf is a character that I have really connected with – his journey from town drunk to a respected soldier has been truly remarkable. I would go as far to say that Wolf’s depiction reminds me very much of Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe, for he is the same sort of underdog, an unlikely hero who men will follow willingly into Hell and back. By using a lowly soldier as the protagonist, Greene allows his readers to witness this war from a soldier's perspective rather than an officer, which makes this story all the grittier and more realistic in the telling.
Another character that really stood out for me was James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart, a celebrated cavalry commander of the Confederate States Army. Although Greene uses a little creative licence in his depiction and the circumstances surrounding his death, I thought his portrayal was fabulous. His intelligence, his love for his wife, and the respect he received from his men was carefully drawn and very real in the telling.
With careful attention to historical detail — the battles, the historical characters, the landscape, and the era, Greene has penned a novel that is as dramatic as it is beguiling. The backdrop to this story, as it was during the war, is enormous, but Greene has undoubtedly done it justice. This book is a work of flawless historical scholarship. Greene demonstrates how confident he is writing about this era through his enthralling narrative. Even when Greene merges fact with fiction, there is still a realism to his writing, which is something that I always look for in Historical Fiction. Greene is certainly a master at his craft for he balances the history with the story very carefully, and what he has written is a simply glorious book.
This book, this series, is next to impossible to put down. One more paragraph becomes one more page, one more page becomes one more chapter, but even then, I did not want to stop. I had to read on. I had to find out how this story was going to end. The Northern Wolf series is one of the best depiction of the American Civil War that I have ever read, and although Northern Hunt stands very firmly on its own two feet, you would be doing yourself a grave disservice if you did not start with Book 1. This is a series that does not threaten to mesmerise, it really does.
I Highly Recommend.
Review by Mary Anne Yarde The Coffee Pot Book Club.
Clearly you aren’t reading this if you have been reading this series. This review is not for you. This review is for the undecided. Well, allow me to alleviate your concerns, this series consistently gets better and better. It’s difficult to describe how this series has really become one of my favorites of all time, because before I started it I wasn’t at all interested in the Civil War. But the story that Mr. Greene tells is universal, its about the characters and their growth and how anyone in that terrible situation may deal with things happening to them and around them. It’s exactly like what I’ve been telling people who aren’t into sci-fi about Battlestar Galactica. It’s not really so much about Space and space battles as it is about the people who are living in it. I speak about character arch in case you don’t follow. And that is what Greene is known for and excels at, and why I read anything he puts out. I’m not going to give spoilers but Greene left us at a cliff hanger in the second book and Northern Blood picks up and keeps it moving nonstop until the end. Wolf, and the men that are tied to him are the perfect vessels in which to tell this epic story. They encapsulates the every-day-man thrown into this terrible time in our history just as hundreds of real men were. Greene really excels at weaving a true, actual battle into his story so well that it has caused me to go and research the actual battle that took place because of his way of telling it. Did I mention that I wasn’t at all into Civil War tales? Greene has caused me to become interested in a topic that I was not into, because of his storytelling in this series. So, if you are into action and adventure, then, check. Plot twists and turns, check. Emotional character development, check. War stories from the front line and behind enemy lines, check. Blood thirsty psychopathic despots, check. Gallows humor, check. Sometimes the “good guys” being grey (Pun intended). And my favorite, Sidekick Horseys, then check. Then this series is for you! You won’t be disappointed.
Absolutely Amazing. Northern Blood was incredibly intense and thoroughly compelling. The way the author weaves accurate historical context with fantastic story telling always blows me away. The way the novel depicts the actions of the war make it easy to imagine you’re riding alongside Wolf and his men.
I loved this installment of the series and it is probably my favorite to date. Some of the noteworthy aspects that put it over the top on that high standard are things such as the accuracy Greene sticks to in describing historical record. The amount of research that went into this novel must’ve taken weeks! Yet somehow none of it comes off as academic, but rather exciting in a way that only Mr. Greene can pull off. Another favorite aspect of this novel is the growth and conflict shown within the main character, Wolf. I won’t go into spoilers, but this is not the same man we met previously. This war has changed him and it is exciting to see that development on such a personal level while the story progresses. Getting to witness his inner thoughts and having that detached insight into his psyche while he wrestles with his new reality is what makes him so believable. Wolf could be anyone of us if we were thrown into his shoes and the author goes out of his way to show that he is a flesh and blood man who has all the same fears and insecurities as the rest of us.
Overall, if you’ve made it this far in my review, you either enjoy Daniel Greene novels, enjoy Civil War novels, or you’re deep in some time-suck rabbit hole. If you are a Greene fan as I am, well you know you’re getting another great novel. If you’re a Civil War fan, this rates right up there with Gods and Generals. And if you’re in a rabbit hole – crawl out, put this on your kindle, and steer your time-suck toward a great work of fiction that will have you entertained the WHOLE way through.
I was sent this book pre-release to read and review, but that has no influence on this review. Set in 1864 during the American Civil War this book takes the reader right into the heart of the battle. Johannes Wolf is the central character but there are many strong individuals on both sides of this battle. The horrors that these men endure would be unbelievable if this was not based around factual events in history. The pain and hardship. The fighting and tragic loss of life that surrounds them. The war impacts on all, not just on those in the armies. Everyday folk lose their supplies to marauding troops, homes are looted and burned. The innocent suffer all kinds of atrocities. The characters are what draw the reader in to this narrative. They are strongly written, all their emotions play a part. They are not simply fighters, they have all those feelings that we all share, impacted upon by the horrendous happenings in their lives. Daniel Greene obviously has a sound knowledge of the wartime events and experiences of these fighters. Yes, leaders like Lee and Custer are in supposedly in charge, but these fighters must make their own decisions. Fail and they die or are captured, which could be worse in the long run. Succeed and they live to fight another day. An excellent narrative, hard to put down once your imagination is caught.
Fiction with a startling dose of realism! I can only imagine the heartbreak and horrors of this nation’s Civil War…until I began reading this series. The author has expertly channeled the dread, despair and cruelty, placing it front-and-center for the reader’s consumption. In this third book of the Northern Wolf series the main character who was captured and tortured now resides with other Union soldiers in the squalor and disease of a building never meant to hold so many prisoners. I cheered when Johannes and Roberts were freed by a Union sympathizer but the mission isn’t anywhere close to being finished. Ready for book 4!
I continue to enjoy the adventures of Johannes Wolf. Even though the plot of this novel is entirely, almost fantastically fictional (there was no plot to kidnap a Confederate general's wife), I still found this to be an exciting and intriguing entry in to Civil War fiction genre. Author Daniel Greene does a great job at bringing his characters to life, both the fictional and historical characters.
So far the Northern Wolf series has been pretty great.
In Book 3, the devastating consequences of conflict become deeply personal as Wolf's companions sacrifice their lives to shield him. The narrative delicately captures his grief, evoking profound emotional resonance. As the plot unfolds, Wolf emerges as a pivotal leader, taking a more proactive role in shaping events. An exceptionally compelling narrative that draws readers into its intricate world.
Civil war, Kidnapping, prisoners of war, backstabbing and favouritism. The authors research really comes through in the book the same as the rest of the series. So many twists and turns it keeps you gripped from start to finish. Clear your plans because you won’t want to put this down!
By late spring 1864 Federal troops are trying to push the Confederates into set-piece battles but Lee and the Virginia countryside are not cooperating. Wolf and a small force are sent to stir things up among the Confederates. Outstanding historical fiction!!
Another great book in a wonderful series. In the same vein as the sharpes series, Wolfs escapades don’t fail to excite me page after page. I recommend to any fan of historical military fiction
I loved this entry into the series. It's clear that Daniel Greene is an extremely talented writer and passionate about the topic. This book is perfect for fans of historical fiction and fast-paced action. I can't wait to see where the series goes next!
A look at one of the most still discussed accounts in USA history. It portrays nepotism and incompetence that caused many unneeded casualties and suffering.
Another exciting chapter in the journey of Johannes Wolf! Maybe the best yet. The author does take considerable liberties with history, however the story is thrilling. Daniel Greene is a born storyteller.
A really good middle novel of a series of five. If you have an interest in the American civil war or want to know about it you can do far worse than to read this 4 and half stars