John Biggins

Naval Officer Ottokar Prohaska has been seconded to the Austro-Hungarian Air Force (k.u.k. Fleigertruppe) to avoid embarrassing questions about whether the Italian submarine he received the Knight’s Cross of Maria Teresa for sinking was actually a German U-boat operating in the Adriatic - and one with his brother-in-law on board, at that. He finds himself operating out of a dubious airfield on the dubious Italian front, commanded by a dubious officer who has never actually flown in an airplane.

This novel has a darker feel than the earlier ones in the series. There are still flashes of the humor and humanity that distinguishes the previous books, but the Italian front in WWI was hell, and there is no way to civilize it. Prohaska finds himself flying as an observer in a Hansa-Brandenburg C1 biplane, piloted by Hungarian ex-monk Zoltan Toth, with whom he must communicate in Latin because that’s their only common language. Their unit conducts ineffectual bombing raids because the statistics-obsessed commanding officer insists on judging success by number of bombs dropped and therefore loads the missions with the smallest bombs available. The author, John Biggins, once again draws on actual events - Prohaska encounters Italian ace Oreste di Carraciolo, clearly based on the real Gabriele D'Annunzio.

The Austro-Hungarian empire is a fascinating place - how could a state that was so incompetent in technical matters turn out Strauss and Strauss and Strauss and Lehar and Liszt and Rilke and Meitner and Klimt and Frisch and Musil and Bartok and hundreds of other composers and authors and painters and scientists?… (mere)

The Emperor’s Colored Coat is the second in the series (although the events described occur earlier than those of A Sailor of Austria). I should warn everybody that I’m getting these for free from an old friend at McBooks Press, on the condition that I write reviews. Since I’d sell my sister to slavers for free books (well, maybe not, but I probably would review the offers) my judgement might be a little suspect.


That being noted, I’m finding these enjoyable. Otto Prohaska, desperate to get off monotonous peacetime service as a junior officer on a AustroHungarian battleship, volunteers for aviation duty and finds himself literally crashing a party hosted by Archduke Ferdinand in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm. He manages to parlay this into a staff job and earns the friendship of the archduchess, which stands him in good stead when an airplane crash almost costs him his leg. An assignment on a Danube river monitor with the worst captain in the entire KUK navy nearly gets him killed by a jealous husband; running from that he finds mistaken identity has landed him in a conspiracy to assassinate the Archduke. He escapes the Serbian plotters only to find himself literally on a slow boat to China and is unable to convince the authorities of the plot before - well, you know what happens. Besieged in Tsingtao, he volunteers for an African Queen style attempt to sink a British battlecruiser with a junk crewed by dubious Chinese semipirates, gets caught in a typhoon, and ends up in Indonesia where his cobbled-together junk/torpedo boat actually succeeds in sinking a Russian merchant cruiser. He meets the only two Czech-speaking headhunters in Borneo, crosses the Indian Ocean one a ship commanded by a Dutch captain who thinks the world is flat, and ends up trekking through Arabia in an exploit reminiscent of the survivors of the German commerce raiding cruiser SMS Emden after it was sunk by HMAS Sydney.


A good chunk of this is derivative from other novels, films and actual events with the names changed. Nevertheless, it’s an entertaining read. I particularly like it that the author doesn’t patronize the reader; when Prohaska scavenges some torpedo drop cradles to arm his junk, there’s no sidebar dissertation on just what drop cradles are - it’s assumed you either know already or are willing to look it up. The book’s tone is generally light - I laughed out loud when German architecture of the period was described as “indigestion made visible”. Nevertheless, there’s a war one; characters die, sometimes unpleasantly, and there are dark hints of worse to come. Well worth it, especially if you’re into naval or general military history. Now I have to read some more about WWI in the Far East.… (mere)

Rceived as a surprise gift from a friend who works for a small publisher. The novel is a pleasant enough techno-actioner but the real value is the inspiration to find out more about the period and technology involved; I had some vague idea that there was an Austrian navy on the Adriatic in WWI but had no grasp of the details (I always wondered why Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music was a naval officer in a country with no seacoast.) I have no idea if the book's information on submarine performance, torpedo details, battles in the Adriatic, etc. are correct; they seem to have the right "look-and-feel" but the author could be making everything up and I'd have no clue; it's a novel, after all. You will probably enjoy this if you like Tom Clancy or Patrick O'Brian. There are two more books in the series that probably fill in the gaps in the life of Ottokar Prohaska, but they seem to be out of print.


This might go well with A soldier of the Great War, which covers the WWI Austrian front from the Italian side and is a more "literary" novel. I find myself reading a lot of WWI books recently. Is there anybody left? If you joined up in in 1918 you would be 104 or 105 now. There must be a few dozen WWI veterans left in the world; maybe a few more if some lied about their age. Has the last man who was at Verdun or the Somme or the Brusilov Offensive or Jutland already left us?… (mere)

The full title of this is worthy of note, as it says much of the dry humor:
A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending to, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire
Currently Reading

In my research on the medical field in World War I, I kept seeing mentions of this book as one of the best World War I novels out there. It didn't pertain to my research, but my curiosity was piqued, so I had to get it. Biggins created a charming, realistic, and dryly-humored character in Otto Prohaska, an Austrian submarine officer. My husband was in the United States Navy, so I know all too well how ridiculous the modern navy can be; this book shows that some things never change.

Otto's adventures are hilarious bordering on the absurd... yet absolutely believable at the same time. In particular, there were incidents involving food poisoning and a camel that had me laughing out loud. There's also the uniqueness of the perspective. It's a book from the perspective of a "bad guy" in a sense: a Czech-Pole, who works as an ally of the Germans. It's also mostly set along the Adriatic Sea and Mediterranean, going into deep, fascinating (never boring!) detail on the operation of submarines. Biggins is very honest in his portrayal of how people suffered during the war; his descriptions of Austria at the war's conclusion are very wrenching.

I loved the book up to the end. It's clear from the start that Otto survives the war, since he's narrating these events when he is over a hundred years old, so that takes away a lot of tension. I was able to predict the one twist of the ending quite far out, and I was disappointed that it played out the way I expected. I really hoped I could be surprised instead.

Now I am not sure if I will read on in the series, which apparently goes into other incidents before and during the war, but overall I found this a delightful read.… (mere)