'Winter 1943. Teenagers Frank, Joseph and Stephen are Royal Navy recruits on their first mission at sea during the Second World War. Their ship is part of an Arctic Convoy sailing to Russia to deliver supplies to the Soviets. The convoys have to navigate treacherous waters, sailing through a narrow channel between the Arctic ice pack and German bases on the Norwegian coast. Faced with terrifying enemy attacks from both air and sea, as well as life-threatening cold and storms, will all three boys make it home again?'
Arctic Star is the latest World War Two set release from publishers Barrington Stoke, and much like their previous books set during this period the novel presents a pretty stark and honest look at the realities of the war for younger readers; refusing to sugar coat the horrors that people had to endure.
Set during the winter of 1943, the story follows three young men from Plymouth, Frank, Joseph, and Stephen, who after growing up watching the Royal Navy ships come in and out of Plymouth decide that they want a life in the Navy too, serving king and country against the threat of the Nazi forces. Luckily for the three of them, they get assigned to the same ship, unfortunately though, they end up as part of a convoy taking much needed supplies to Russian allied forces through treacherous and freezing oceans.
The book begins dramatically, showing the harsh conditions that the three friends, and other real life sailors, would have to deal with as part of the Arctic convoys. Sub-zero winds, massive waves, and water that freezes on the decks of the ship into huge blocks of ice are a daily reality for the crew, and it's whilst trying to chisel these frozen hazards off the ship that Frank is thrown overboard, into the freezing waters below. Though Frank is quickly saved, this moment manages to show not only how dangerous these conditions are, but that our three leads aren't guaranteed to stay safe across the course of the story.
Without giving away too many details of the book, one of the three friends doesn't survive the story, and a good portion of the book is given over to showing the effects that the war had on young people like Frank, Joseph, and Stephen, how losing close friends could lead them to doubt their conviction for the cause, and how their own near death experiences would leave them deeply emotionally scarred. The book is written for readers of all ages, so you're not going to be seeing sailors blow to pieces or burnt in fires on board ships, but it does have people die in it. It doesn't pretend that war was some grand adventure where no one got hurt and young men became heroes.
In fact, there's not much heroic in this book. Even when the end of the book deals with the real life Battle of North Cape, which saw Royal Navy ships engaging with the Scharnhorst, a huge battleship responsible for destroying numerous ships, those sailors on the British ships don't celebrate the destruction of their enemy; even though their enemy was just trying to kill them. Tom Palmer looked at the reports from sailors present at the battle, saw how the huge loss of life, even of their enemies, affected them, and put that in the book. He shows younger readers that you can feel sorry for the loss of life on the other side of the battle lines, and that there's no joy in celebrating death.
Tom Palmer is brutally honest in his book, and as such it makes for an effective and engaging read; one that some younger readers might find surprising, and could result in some shocks and tears. But I think it's important that children be shown that violence and war isn't as heroic as it's been made out to be, that loss of any life is a terrible, sad thing, and this book does that in spades.
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