BLOOD & IRON

With native intelligence, deadly aim, and backwoods innocence, Marine Corporal Levi Rankin serves on a gunboat on China's Yellow River, defending Western interests during the Boxer Rebellion. BLOOD & IRON brings to life a too often ignored piece of American history. Narrator Don Keyes and Brian Barnes, as Rankin, do their best to dramatize in this unabridged full-cast reading, but there are times when this expansive story careens from the seriousness of a Joseph Conrad novel to the expansiveness of a pulp Western to the silliness of a bodice-ripper. The reason may be that this historic period is one of the last eras before newsreels and sound recordings. The sights and especially the sounds are hard to separate from cliché. However, from beginning to end, the story has a lot of detail and energy. That just might be enough. B.P. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 02]