Sniper Elite: Spear of Destiny

“Sniper Elite: Spear of Destiny” by Jaspre Bark is based on the videogame “Sniper Elite” by Rebellion Games. It is the first in a projected series from Abaddon Books.

The story centers on Karl Fairburne, an elite American sniper fighting in the last days of World War II’s European theater. Germany has all but fallen when Fairburne’s superiors give him dire news: Germany has built a working nuclear weapon, and a rogue SS general plans to defect to the Soviet Union and take the secret of the atomic bomb with him. With the United States and Soviet Union still officially allied, Fairburne must go deep undercover and battle Germans and Russians alike to keep this terrible new weapon out of Stalin’s hands.

I liked the central idea for this story, but the execution of the initial premise was disappointing. The plot is competent but not particularly gripping, consisting in large part of the protagonist going on a series of sniping missions assigned by his commander, with battles and complications arising on each mission. Unfortunately, the main character and overall story arc isn’t interesting enough to keep the individual episodes from getting repetitive after a while. There are some interesting developments near the end, but my lack of investment in the events and characters weakened their effect.

The book is badly weakened by the lack of interesting major characters. The hero and viewpoint character, Karl Fairburne, is not very compelling- he has little personality, and the back story he is given did little to provoke my interest. Fairburne’s lack of personality could have been effective if used to further a characterization of a man with his emotions dulled by the horror of war (as is skillfully done in some of David Drake’s work, for instance) but I didn’t get a sense of that from Fairburne; he didn’t come across as damaged, just uninteresting. This is especially unfortunate because there are some plot twists towards the end that would have been far more effective if I had been more interested in the main character.

On the plus side, the book’s atmosphere is strong. Bark paints an evocative picture of war-ravaged Berlin. He does a good job of creating a sense of despair and decay in his descriptions of the ruined city. The book’s action sequences are fast-paced and exciting, and Bark is good at creating a sense of tension during the sniping sequences. The violence is fairly graphic, and Bark uses that to good effect- the frequent descriptions of bloody injury and death, which could have been repetitive if handled poorly, did a good job of creating an atmosphere of horror.

All in all, I see “Spear of Destiny” as something of a missed opportunity, with an interesting premise, effective atmosphere, and a few potentially strong plot moments weighed down by a repetitive, mostly middling narrative and flat characters. To be fair to Bark, some of this may be due to the limitations of the source material, since he was presumably expected to follow the plot and characterizations of the video game. Unfortunately, despite some elements that make me suspect that Bark is a better writer than this book suggests, I can’t recommend “Spear of Destiny.”