When Heroes Flew: The Shangri-La Raiders

An truly inspirational book about the mission and subsequent escape by one of the crews who participated on the Doolittle raid over Tokyo. The story was compelling and suspenseful. I literally could not stop reading this book! A great must read for history fans!

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is a great book! The writing was great, the telling of the story was excellent and I grew to care about every character. The descriptions of the flights, the jumps, the pain, the rice paddies, all of it, was some of the best I’ve ever read, there is one in particular that just took my breath away. I will definitely be reading the other two books in this series.
I always love true stories and especially when the author ends the book with letting us know how the characters lived by telling us the “rest of the story”. These men and “woman” were true heroes and I thank them for their service and sacrifices for our county. This one will go into my best war books read list. Highly recommend.
I was so excited to receive an ARC of this book from Severn River Publishing along with NetGalley for my unbiased review. I highly recommend and it comes in with 5 stars!!

'I suppose that's what happens in all wars. A point is reached where the killing itself becomes the focus, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, until all are sightless and toothless. The tactics become the strategy.'

When Heroes Flew: The Shangri-La Raiders is set against a part of history that I personally know very little of, and I found that wholly refreshing. Theoretically the second in a series, the book is a stand-alone that follows a young US lieutenant and his crew as they carry out a bombing mission in Japan and tells the story of their trek through China after crashing.

While the second part of the book pulled me in more than the first (which seemed somehow a bit staccato and factual, reading more like a journal than a story), the book overall painted a vivid picture and could well become the basis of a movie. Make no mistake, the book is gruesome in the picture it paints. It is about war after all, and the author does not shy away from showing the reality of that. If you have a hard time dealing with reading about the gore of war and enemies encountering enemies, this might not be your book.

I am not sure how I feel about the strong depiction of the Japanese as the ultimate bad-guys in this book (often with racial slur), but then again, it somehow makes sense as we are seeing and understanding the situation and the scenes from Boss' perspective.

Finally, I did enjoy the budding romance, as it added some lighter touches to an otherwise tough story. This is one for history buffs who enjoy military and/or WWII history. It was one of those rare books where the video played in my head as I was reading!