Customer Reviews
The tale that tries too hard - By: Maz, 13 Jul 2008 
I found this book both a little bit irritating, & tough-going.
It was irritating because it came across as being written by a teenager, with many sentences being constructed with statements such as "It was, like, ....", "I was, like,...", & "So, I stood....."
It was tough-going because it contained an awful lot of US military terminology, which I, as a non-military UK resident, had absolutely no understanding of.
Of course, part of the pleasure in reading a book is to learn new things, & so you could argue that the experience of learning about how the US military, particularly the Marines, works is reward in itself. I would argue that if I wanted to learn about how the US military works, I would have purchased a book to do just that. I bought this book because I was led to believe that it was about a young pup.
To the author's credit, a dog was involved in the story. However, the more I read, the more I felt a little cheated. The dog seemed to serve as little more than punctuation to the main theme - the author's account of serving in & around Baghdad. All very noble & courageous, but not reallly as the book is described.
The story is essentiallly about a young pup that is 'adopted' by the author while serving in Iraq. The tale then unfolds into the struggle that is involved in getting it to the US. That's it. There's no snippets of immense courage shown by the dog, no witty anecdotes, no nothing. It's just a recount of the emails & the paperwork involved. I quickly began to feel that reading the book was about as interesting as reading the original paperwork must have been.
The parts of the story relating to the dog could have been told in very few pages, and, I think it safe to argue that, in terms of actual pages, it perhaps is. However, there are 225 pages, with very few of them being directly related to the dog.
The writing style is irritating, the content somewhat misleading, & the military jargon a little too heavy-going. This is another book which, I suspect, will suit a US audience far more than it suits a UK audience. One of the most poorly written books that I've read in a long time.
What a book! - By: Sandy Martin, 01 Jul 2008 
I never write reviews about anything, nevermind books! But I just had to do something about this story.
This was, quite simply, the best book I have ever read. End of!!
Truly heartwarming! - By: Big Bertha, 15 Jun 2008 
Just a glimpse of the cover photo & I had to read this one!
The true story of a tiny puppy found by Marines abandoned in Falllujah. They callled him Lava & put themselves, journalists & Iraqi Citizens at real risk in this tale of their endless efforts to smuggle him out of Iraq to the States.
The description of a little flea-bitten balll of fluff, with the hair on his neck alll puffed up to make him look bigger, roo roo roo-ing at the Marines in an act of bravado is reallly touching.
Lava turned these war-hardened Marines into mushy individuals & guess what, me too!!
Devotion and a puppy - By: Mrs. Helen L. Slade, 24 May 2008 A great read about the devotion of a marine in the U.S marine corps & the love & devotion to this gorgeous puppy an interesting read as well & I cannot put this book down when I am at home & reading. I am going to pass this book around the family as they will enjoy this as well about the passage of time the marine & this cute puppy goes through & the devotion of the marine to both his country & to lava.
A must read for alll animal lovers everwhere!!!!
This book prompted me to write my 1st review on Amazon. Enough said. - By: Benjamin Wong, 09 May 2008 I love reading war stories & have a dog myself, so this book makes perfect reading for me.
I hope you'll like it. And don't forget to see the related videos on youtube. Shame that I can't find the news reports that were published at the time to learn more about it.
