Rating: 
Summary: Bleak, Dark, Horrifying
Review: I find some of the reviews here to be a bit too glib and detached. If ever there was an indictment of our species capacity for hatred, destruction, and cruelty, this is it. Loyd pulls no punches. His frontline descriptions of the atrocities in Bosnia and Chechnya are harrowing. Apparently some critics find the descriptions of men, women, and children being blown to bits, tortured, burned, and mutilated to be just some kind of interesting reporting, with the author's personal struggles a distraction from the main entertainment. I suppose anything can be intellectualized if you don't experience it personally, but this book is as close as I ever want to come to such unrestrained savagery. Loyd is to be commended for communicating the hard truth about ourselves so well.
Rating:
Summary: Unsettling View of an Unsettling War
Review: Like the author's journey, the reader's descent into this book mirrors the voyeuristic trip taken by Loyd into the heart of war. We feel a little uneasy, but like Loyd, we are driven to know the heart of this evil. At times it is hard to feel empathy for Loyd when he ponders a fix after having witnessed the slaughter of families. However, this is the paradox that makes for a riveting read. It is his experience - not ours. This honesty is the only aid we have in understanding the chaos of Bosnia (then later Chechnya) and becomes a welcome and necessary companion. You may understand the players a little better, but you will not understand the reasons for the war any better after having read this book. Like so much we have seen and read about this conflict, the book reveals the disturbing truth from the trenches. And the view is not pretty.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding front-line account...the horror of war unveiled.
Review: Anthony Loyd has written a remarkable book. For anyone who has spent time in the Balkans, you can picture the areas he reported the war from, although his picture is likely a bit different than ours. His stories from the front line, taking into account his meetings with Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims are incredible.
I probably could have lived without his tales of drug-induced stupor during his brief interludes back in London, but despite these brief momements, the book was alive with the fog, horror and brutality of this war.
Also noteworthy was Loyd's brief trip to Grozny, to report on the Russian's first efforts to take the city. It is interesting how Loyd compares and contrasts the two conflicts.
For anyone interested in the Bosnian conflict, this book will provide an edge to the somewhat dulled historical accounts found in many history books.
Rating: 
Summary: Compelling subject, apalling prose.
Review: It's difficult to believe this book is written by an Englishman. The prose is awkward, wordy and amateurish. The effect is of an inept translation from a foreign tongue. If the subject matter, gore and war, weren't so compelling and sensational, no one would drag himself through these pages. Even the lightest editing of these overburdened sentences would have been welcome. The chapters about heroin addiction were actually some of the most interesting, with subject matter appropriate to the author's creepy style.
Rating:
Summary: Push this one to the top of your to-read stack!
Review: This book takes the reader through a dangerous and inhuman landscape while looking over the shoulder of a true adventurer/writer. A rare animal lately. The book's style is neither overbearingly cerebral nor flip. He hits a tone early on and you'll find yourself staying up all night to see what our historian, traveler, adventurer and author will get up to next. No boring account of places been and things seen, this could be a novel were it not so starkly and disturbingly real. I recommend it highly. It has earned a place on my shelf, find room on yours!
Rating:
Summary: Brutal and revealing
Review: Brutal, brutal book. What at first looks like an advanturist's account, it later becomes an honest diary of a daily tragedy and of a toll that Bosnian tragedy takes on author's personal account. This book and an excellent BBC TV drama "Peacekeepers"
go very well together. Beware, reading one and watching another may bring permanent feeling of bitterness in your comfortable lives.5 star book.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting chronicle of the Bosnian War
Review: This book chronicles the experiences of a journalist who observed first hand the war in the Balkans. Filled with descriptions of mutilated bodies, atrocities, and other unpleasant things, this book is not only a good primer on the Bosnian War but also shows the addiction to war that can take place that is similar to drug addiction. The author himself indulged in both pursuits and makes no bones about it. While sitting in a warm, comfortable chair, it is difficult to imagine that anyone could wish to subject themselves to a situation in which sudden death could occur. However, the author, from his own experience as well as the listing of others, proves that this can happen.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This is probably the best written book documenting a war that I have read, not because of research or completeness in the story, but the writing itself was just that good. The book is the personal account written by a bored young man that decides that maybe being a war photographer will bring some excitement to his life. This said he goes off to the Bosnian war during the early to mid 1990's. The author does not skip any of the brutality that made up this war, he talks about the war crimes committed, the death and destruction that takes place in normal combat, firefights and getting shelled, and the toll all of this takes on him and his peers. The author makes a point that he was not just another war correspondent, but an ex soldier that was more of a war junkie or thrill seeker then journalist. He also describes how he did not cover the war like most other journalists; he went right into the battles with troops from either side. He does not think much of the company journalists that only ventured out of their hotel rooms to get the latest update from the UN headquarters. He also states that for himself it was impossible to remain objective with some much pain and evil going on around him. The real power of the book comes from the author's ability to describe the incredible amount of human cruelty and suffering in the Bosnian war. He really makes you understand what war crimes and ethnic cleansing are all about, not just words but people that have the worst other humans can think up perpetrated against them. The book does not detail out why the war was taking place nor the world politics that were going on at the time, but that is not its focus. It is a very good account of the war through his eyes and if you are interested in the war at all, this should be one of the books you read.
Rating:
Summary: Well Worth a look.
Review: This is a very good book. While not perfect by any stretch, it is a very good look at a side of the world that few appreciate in the West. Firstly, the writing is acutly personal. The thing that prevents this getting five stars is the lengthy introspective part on his family. It doesnt really contribute to the point that he is trying to make- heroin and conflict are addictive, and it just tends to blunt the main messages of the book. Secondly, the description of the characters and events he has dealt with are as good as it gets. I to have served overseas and the descriptions he uses are accurate and correct. The book gives you littles insight into why the conflict occurs, but if you want to get an insight into the addiction to conflict and hatred that drives the war, the book is worth its price for the introductory chapter alone. Buy it, I do not think you will regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Not a traditional war story....
Review: Its hard to describe this book. It is a 1st hand look at war in the modern age up-close, not from a soldier's eye but from a guy that just wanted to see what the front looks like. He found in effect that there is no front anymore. Shells drop in marketplaces, civilians are shot by snipers far away and even so-called UN peacekeepers are of no help to the fleeing hordes. Violence is all over, and he finds that he really does not have to go looking far to find it.
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