I started this when we had a bit of a cold snap, thinking listening to people in slightly colder conditions than me would make me feel a bit better. This is one of those adventure thrillers that has a deep underlying mystery about it but you’re so busy going through the rollercoaster of dangerous situations you don’t have much time to think about whodunit. This has many elements I love, most being the perils of travelling on a submarine, but also the survivalist aspects of being near the poles. And ultimately it’s a great thriller ride right to the end.

It’s not clear whether this book is fact or fiction, it presents as a diary recovered from a German prisoner-of-war, as a factual record of his progress through the German navy and the first World War. But there’s not a lot known about it so it could be fabrication. Regardless, it does a great job of showing how human both sides of a war can be, people just doing their jobs, falling in love, missing home and doing their duty. A good, quick, read.

I bought this, obviously, because of the submarine connection - submarines have fascinated me for a long time now, that claustrophobic and tense bullet of steel travelling under the sea to either cause chaos or mitigate the threat of others. The book was actually about leadership, with the author using examples from his time as captain of a poorly-performing submarine and how he turned things around. It’s about a new model of leadership, giving control to the people and guiding in as hands-off a way as possible. It’s very readable, not too preachy, and I think I learned a thing or two along the way! Plus submarines!

We sort of stumbled across this as a bonus - it’s not available on iTunes but Mr C was very excited to see it pop up on Netflix because it was a bit of a trailblazer in terms of CGI. So we embarked on a viewing, and oof, it was good.

The good things included the twist that turned Dom rogue in the first place - didn’t see that coming - as well as the bickering between Roman and the new boy. I also really enjoyed Jason Statham’s role in this, and I’ve not been a huge fan of his in the past. The fight sequence with the baby on the plane (weird sentence) was epic.

It’s no secret that I have a fondness for submarines, but I actually know precious little about them. The odd movie here or there is about the limit of my expertise, but I’m keen to start righting this wrong. This book chronicles the true story of what one of our submarines was really doing during the Cold War, and also details some of the coverup that occurred to hide its actions.

Overall, I enjoyed it, and it’s definitely sparked up my obsession with submarines again. I thought it got a bit confusing in places, and I did find it difficult to keep which submarine was which in my mind. I later read that they tried to make the interiors a different colour for each one, particularly in the three-way battle at the end. I didn’t notice that, so that didn’t help me! I thought the accents were weird - I get that they didn’t want to speak Russian the whole time, but then perhaps could have decided if they were going to attempt Russian accents or not?

I really loved this. Initially I was concerned when the reporter gave us a huge spiel of backstory that I struggled to follow and had no hope of remembering. Thankfully, it wasn’t necessary to remember the intricate details of who said what to whom, the fight was clear. Between boat captains, between nations, between morals. Tony Scott mastered making the scenes tense, I was almost literally on the edge of my seat at times. It had its Black Hawk Down moment, genuinely pulling at my robot heart-strings, and it was all really well done.