Wednesday, November 11, 2020

2020 book 214

 Elizabeth Wein's The Enigma Game

I don’t know why Wein keeps expanding the Code Name Verity-verse, but this is a fairly strong outing in the series. It focuses on Julie's brother Jamie and her friend Ellen, stationed near each other in 1940, and a new character, Louisa, a biracial girl from Jamaica who's taken a job an an aide to an elderly woman. This is a pretty solid story full of wartime action and intrigue, code-breaking, and identity (Ellen is a Traveler, the old woman is originally from Germany, and many people are racist to Louisa). It took me a little while to buy Louisa's narrative voice (I buy that she wants to help in the war effort but her fascination with planes is just Wein being obsessed with pilot ladies, her usual MO). But eventually it all comes together to a mostly satisfying end. It just makes me want to reread Code Name Verity though. A-/B+.

No comments: