Rating: 
Summary: Top Notch
Review: What a great book, and a bit horrifying. Loyd's fascination with war and death is unnerving, but his passion for human life, shown in his fury against unchecked violence, redeems his work from a slide into blackness.The writing is fantastic, and he maintains a great rhythm.
The book combines Loyd's personal journey, largely his downtime away from the front ( which reads like Irvine Welsch) and frontline reporting. The personal account harmonizes and competes with his experiences in war. Although I'm not a soldier, his stress and bits of self destruction show themselves as the book develops, his work conveys the bludgeoning a soldier might take after seeing so much death. Thanks for the work Anthony! I hope you are doing well.
Rating:
Summary: still confused...
Review: just finished this book moments ago, two years after it was published. i'm in awe - and yes, i'm still confused as to what happened over there, which i'm inclined to think was the point. i'm glad he wasn't biased or part of an organized military effort in bosnia, i'm glad he had no interest in journalism, and i'm glad he went there running, hiding, and seeking. for once, we were able to see the mess that was through the eyes of a civilian brave enough (or stupid enough) to step up to the front lines, albeit someone who left as confused as any of the rest of us. at least he saw the truth, and made it home to write about it. in the end, i'm still confused as to whether loyd's a fatalist or a truth seeker - maybe he's both.
Rating: 
Summary: Loyd Misses the Points I Hoped He Would Hit
Review: First let me preface this by saying that I am a U.S. Army Officer who served in Bosnia for 7 months commanding an Engineer Company. We did a lot of counter-mine operations. I dealt with the Muslims and the Serbs at almost a personal level on a daily basis. After I returned, I longed to get some insight into what motivated and drove these people to do the atrocities they did. I was hoping Loyd's front-line accounts would fill in some clues. Unfortunately, I found this book wanting in many substantive areas. The reader will appreciate some of his personal anecdotes with all the former warring factions, but will gain little practical information. HOWEVER, I applaud him on his effort. It takes gutts to do what he did, and then write about it. ANTHONY LOYD, IF YOU ARE READING THIS, I SALUTE YOU for throwing aside your press objectivity when you had to and helping that Bosnian Family during the firefight. You did the right thing! In closing, to get a "taste" of Bosnia, read this book. To gain a deep appreciation for what is going on there, keep searching.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Anthony Loyd provides a personal perspective of the war in Bosnia that is truly magnificent. His account is honest and direct; a magnificent exploration of the devastating effects of war, both on those who wage it and those who witness it, as retold through a pseudo-narrative of his experiences -- leading up to, during, and immediately following -- the Bosnian war, where he was a correspondent. The experiences of Mr. Loyd are beautifully enhanced by his magnificent writing and the reader, at the end of the book, is left with the distinct impression that (s)he has been allowed a privileged glimpse into a world most of us are blessed not to hav witnessed, but which we all have a duty to know. Mr. Loyd deserves high praise for his work, and I recommend this book to absolutely everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: A haunting portrait, but also an egotistical writer
Review: This book does a first-rate job of transporting the reader into the conflicts in Bosnia and helps to understand what exactly was going on there. It does this through good personalized accounts as well as broad perspectives on the history and nature of the three-sided war. The only thing keeping the book from getting five stars is that at times it's tough to take Loyd's wandering chapters about his ... addictions and family traumas. By seeking the reader's sympathy and approval, he somewhat demeans the much greater tragedies unfolding throughout the narrative. Beyond that, though, it was a chilling and highly informative work that any reader would take something out of.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing
Review: This is one of the most gut wrenching books you will ever read. One would hope that the attitudes that causes conflicts of this type would be gone from the world and you can get extremely ill reading about the war and the atrocities. What really get you make thought is the ineptitude of the European leaders in dealing with this crisis. Anthony Lloyd focuses mainly on the British response to the crisis but you can tell that most of the European countries act the same way. There is much anti-American feeling in Europe at this time. I feel most of it is guilty sub-conscience because deep down they know that they cannot and will not in the future be able to handle conflicts of this kind and they resent having to turn to America for help.
Rating:
Summary: Just when you thought you lived in a civlized world...
Review: Although it is easy to say that this is a book about Bosnia, the title says it all. This is a meditation on Loyd's witness to the sickening and senseless violence he saw in Bosnia and Chechnya, played off against his own admitted interest in being around such chaos and bloodshed. It has become a standard response to the Rwandas and Bosnias of the world to say "What could make formerly peaceful people, pick up arms and murder their neighbors?" Loyd shows that although he is repulsed by the killing, there lurks inside himself a part that is drawn to it; not only out of curiousity, but for the ability of such situations to make him feel more alive...more connected. He is honest enough to admit that he is not that much different than the killers that are typically branded as non-human, genocidal thugs. Loyd also talks about something that has been forgotten in the "modern" world...the concept of "evil." Although he is reluctant to use the word, he finds that eventually there is no other way to describe what he has seen....he sees evil as a palpable presence that seems to have settled in for a protracted stay in Bosnia. Lastly, I should mention that Loyd's writing is quite good at drawing you into the book...I was hooked after the first 8 pages which left me stunned and a bit unnerved as to what lay ahead. I have re-read this opening passage several times and am always left in state of shock that such a world still exists, and admiration for Loyd in honestly showing his own demons and those who ran amuk in Bosnia. Philip Gourevitch's "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families" is a great companion piece if you need any more convincing that we live in a barbaric age, and that pronouncments of "Never Again" are hollow words when the developed world turns a blind eye if their own immediate self-interest is not at stake.
Rating:
Summary: Wrenching
Review: This is powerful writing. Poetic and introspective, a nose-to-nose look at the seductive horrors of the Bosnian war. Loyd, a British kickabout backs into a job as a correspondent in Bosnia, and finds addiction, terror, and brutality that leave him discovering himself as much as he examines the warring Bosnian tribes. Loyd is a cynic, not a gee-whiz war journalist, impelled to explore the crevices in the war where the people live and eschew the cozy journalists' tables at the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo. This is a "Heart of Darkness" account, dark and introspective, as much about his own soul and those of the people he encounters as about the depravities of the war itself. Loyd went to Bosnia posing as a photo-journalist, but there are no photos in this book. He later submitted newspaper stories, but there is nothing here about the causes of the war, the historical forces that created it or the policies of the various leaders who kept the coals hot. Save war criminals like Fikret Abdic and Ivica Rajic, there are few characters here known to the outside world. Instead, there is just Loyd watching himself voyeuristically as he descends through concentric circles of hell, "I wanted to reach a human extreme in order to cleanse myself of my sense of fear, and saw war as the ultimate frontier of human experience". He is haunted by the supreme horrors of the Stupni Do massacre, present at the collapse of the Bihac pocket, where he articulates clearly his no-longer-guilty love of the adrenaline thrill and immediacy of combat. The next step is a worse war, Chechnya, an unspeakable place of round-the-clock fear and destruction where even Loyd burns out in a matter of days. This is a wrenching story of drugs, god, fate, and fear. Of Loyd's struggle with his father, and his search for resolution and peace in the turmoil and chaos of war. It is sad and powerful, awful and seductive. An amazing book.
Rating: 
Summary: Sick Piece of Pornography
Review: I'm surprised by the glowing reviews for this book - it left me sickened to the stomach, and the memory of it still makes me ill. It is not that old-Etonian Loyd's book is especially shocking about the horrors of war - read a page of any book on WW1, or Chuck Sudetic's superb book on the Balkan wars ('Blood and Vengeance'), and you'll learn more about war, violence and killing than from this rubbish. No, what is sickening is that Loyd seems to think that the war in the Balkans is all about him - his personal middle-class confusions, his heroin addictions, his troubled personality, his relationship with his father. Violence and killing in this book are simply metaphors for Loyd's own personal battles with his own demons. This is the ultimate journalistic solipsism - not just "I was there", but "It was about me". It so obviously was not - and Loyd's book is just a piece of pornography, exploiting the innocent and the dead. (His account of the politics of the war is just complete propaganda for the Bosnian Muslims). If you want to understand the Balkans, or war, or anything really, don't buy this. If you want a cheap fix of self-doubt and the vicarious thrill of torture and murder, well, maybe you should buy this. And you should be ashamed. It's also really badly-written too.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping and disturbing.
Review: It took me a while to get into this book. But once I realized that there wasn't a good side, or a bad side, or any explanation as to why this was going on, or how we got involved, or why we're still involved the book started to make sense. At least as much sense as a foreign civil war can. The author takes us from arriving in Sarajevo through final cease-fire with a brief (but very violent) diversion into Chechnya. Loyd spends much of his time with common people and soldiers, and is through their eyes that we see most of the war. Despite the number of deaths, mutilations, and general horrors you can be assured that a story even more disgusting and appalling is only a few pages away. This books greatest strength is that it never loses its raw edge.
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