Very resistable - Rated 
With such an imaginative premise-Germany winning the second world war, this book should have been more exciting than it was. Robert Harris did a far better job in the similary themed Fatherland, but in Resistance there is endless dreary description of farming duties which don't move the story on. The characters too are rather lacklustre and the lack of tension is very evident.
I bought this book because I heard Chris Smith extolling its virtues on A Good Read on Radio 4. Yes, the book is well written, but it's not tightly plotted. On one page, the German Officer Albrecht asks if he may come into Sarah Lewis's house. It's another 36 lines or so before he gets an answer.
This is the sort of slow motion prose that pervades the book.
Boring and disappointing - Rated
I was really disappointed. The book was boring and dragged out. The history aspect of it is not even true. I wish I hadn't bothered finishing this book. The author didn't even get the few German words in the story right. Any translation website would have been able to tell him the correct spelling, but he didn't seem to have bothered. Not great!
what happened next? - Rated 
really enjoyed it but a bit baffled by the ending - want to know what happened...
An easy page turner that manages to be insightful and relevant - Rated
Owen Shears' book Resistance tells the story of a group of women hill-farmers, living in the Black Mountains in Wales, in 1944. In this novel the Battle of Britain was lost, so on the eve of the German invasion the women's husbands leave to join the resistance, believing that their families will be safer without them.
The book tells the story of the relationships between the women themselves and also between them and the German patrol also staying in the valley over winter. The women come across as tough and capable, in true Dunkirk spirit, but their characters are all carefully drawn.
The patrol of young German soldiers are shown as damaged in one way or another by their experiences in the War, which gives them a real three-dimensionality.
The landscape dominates the story, and makes you want to rush off and walk there, for all its menace and inhospitability.
Ignore the schlock romance cover, this is a book with real ideas about invasion, resistance, insurgency and collaboration, all of which are relevant to day. Shears delivers his message with a light touch and an easy, flowing style. The perfect book to curl up with on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Excellent - Rated 
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The novel is not perfect, but as a first novel it is some achievement. I found the pacing to be just right, the description of the farming and the weather is integral to understanding the story and it is not surprising that those who can't make that connection consequently do not enjoy the story.
The 3rd Reich in the Olchon valley - that's the brilliant big picture but the human reactions of the women, the soldiers and the wider rural community is the gripping story that unfolds. A walk over Twmpa in the Black Mountains will never quite be the same again.
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