A unique concept and interesting read. I am somewhat confused with the pre-born individual in heaven until he suddenly gets called something else when he lands in BIH but I am trying to not dig too deep to understand otherwise I get more confused.

As a reader who was old enough to remember place names and some general idea of what was going on in former Yugoslavia, but just barely, I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the conflict that destroyed so much and ruined the lives of so many people not so long ago. Reading this book does straighten out some things- who the different sides were, and what puzzled me as a kid- how can they possibly tell who to kill, since they all look so similar to an outsider. Other puzzles remain so after reading this novel, though, and this book attempts to address them- why people want to kill each other so much anyway, what could motivate people to commit mass murder in a messy civil war that is bound to destroy infrastructure and wreck the beautiful land all sides swear they love. My frustrations certainly are echoed within this book. Obviously this is a novel set in a rough patch in human history, and is about people being nasty to each other, but the story follows a boy growing up in a non-practicing Muslim family within this mess. He is not inherently a cruel or evil person but clearly there is an underlying viciousness to his community that he is expected to accept and absorb, and this story is in part about whether he can resist the evil that pervades the world around him. There are some tough scenes, including an animal cruelty scene which might be a DNF-worthy scene for some readers. Overall though I really liked this book. Maybe not quite 5-stars, but close enough.

This was a very interesting read. At times heavily detailed but still compelling enough to keep you reading. The connections to heaven and placement of souls was very intriguing! I would totally recommend this book!

Thanks to NetGalley, the publishing company and or the author for giving me the opportunity to read and review The Balkan Air.

The concept is great but the writing and editing needs to be much better.

It's a decent book, though it ends rather oddly and abruptly.

It's a very sad story and event of my country. The book describes this period and how life was very correctly. It's a good book to read to see one side of this horrible war, side that suffered the most.

What bothered me a lot is translation of places and other names of the things. And most of the times, bad translations, as if someone used a bad translator or doesn't speak English well. But reading the book didn't give the impression of bad English speaker.

I don't understand why name of town Čapljina is called Herontown. I knew second I saw name Herontown that it's not a native name of the city. Other places like Mostar, Sarajevo etc, were luckily not translated. Place Goli Otok being called Naked Island, actually made me laugh. No map or encyclopedia calls it anything other then Goli Otok. Translating name of the drink rakija as brandy, naming the music band Bjelo Dugme as White Button, so unnecessary and immersion breaking. There were many other examples, these just stuck the most. I almost dropped the book at about 30% because of this.

I understand change of spelling, especially when it includes letters čćžđš, to fit English language, but even that didn't have consistency. Ć was sometimes just c, sometimes ch.

Maybe this bothered me so much because I actually like when I read historical books, is for names of places and things to stay the same. Maybe because they are close to me. It broke immersion a lot and I didn't get what I really hoped to find reading this book.

But I assume that for English only speaker who cares little of this, that they won't even notice it.

Loved this book. I gave it 4 stars. The story is so so good!!! Loved every second of it. I recommend everyone to read this story.