Written shortly after the attacks of 9/11, Sweet Robert's Serenade is set in the near future in a world where an enemy has invaded. While it's never stated specifically that it's set in the early part of the millennium, two of the characters are elderly World War II survivors, so the action couldn't plausibly occur too much further into the future.

The book captures the reader's interest at the beginning by describing the world, darkened by war, as seen through the protagonist's eyes. Robert, a young man, befriends two war evacuees who move in to stay with his family and who happen to also be World War II survivors of Nazi Germany. The elderly man, a former music professor who becomes a grandfather figure to Robert, helps him write a song in order to express and cope with his fears.

Despite an engaging opening, this book would have been better as a short story. Even though it is a terse 140 pages, there's far too much padding, such as letters that all the characters have written to their loved ones, in case they die in the conflict.

And as important as the song is to the tale, it takes the author a really long time to reveal any details about the song, except for an excerpt from the lyrics, which appears before the first chapter and is easy to overlook. Perhaps the author doesn't have much personal knowledge of music and so didn't know the vocabulary to use to describe the song.

Perhaps because of the time at which it was written, the book tends towards jingoism, to the point where the family regards war protestors as dangerous enemies of the state. This could turn off many readers who believe that protesting the government is a patriotic duty when the need arises.

I would say, however, the book is a good effort. The author clearly has some storytelling abilities. The style is clear and interesting, and the author does a good job of establishing characters and describing action. I would recommend sticking to short story writing for awhile, developing that as an art. Maybe a collection of short stories could follow.

Infinity Publishing, 2003: ISBN, 07414-1675-1