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soniapage's review
3.0
Not as good as the first because it moves more slowly and concerns itself too much with the romances.
muggsyspaniel's review against another edition
2.0
I'm very torn about this book. It's part two of three, it is 575 very small print pages and I don't particularly like the two lead characters. Add to that some of the dialogue is painful to read and you'd think I'd pack up early and read something I might enjoy.
There are plusses though. The setting, a valley of, partly, Delderfield's creation is wonderfully realised. I think I could probably find my way around the valley if you plonked me in the middle of it now. The supporting characters are mostly a likeable bunch, apart from the ones you aren't supposed to like and for some reason they drift off and aren't heard from again. The first book covered the time from the Boer War up until the rumblings of WWI, this one takes us through WWI and the Spanish Civil War right up to the opening months of WWII. As you might expect the bulk of this is about WWI, in fact, I wondered if any characters we'd come to know in the first volume would make it out of this one alive, actually very few did and mostly the ones you didn't want making it out.
So for all its faults I can't say I hate this book, it infuriated me a fair bit and occasionally almost made me retch a little (some of that dialogue...) but I'll soldier on with the final volume after a little palette cleansing diversion.
There are plusses though. The setting, a valley of, partly, Delderfield's creation is wonderfully realised. I think I could probably find my way around the valley if you plonked me in the middle of it now. The supporting characters are mostly a likeable bunch, apart from the ones you aren't supposed to like and for some reason they drift off and aren't heard from again. The first book covered the time from the Boer War up until the rumblings of WWI, this one takes us through WWI and the Spanish Civil War right up to the opening months of WWII. As you might expect the bulk of this is about WWI, in fact, I wondered if any characters we'd come to know in the first volume would make it out of this one alive, actually very few did and mostly the ones you didn't want making it out.
So for all its faults I can't say I hate this book, it infuriated me a fair bit and occasionally almost made me retch a little (some of that dialogue...) but I'll soldier on with the final volume after a little palette cleansing diversion.
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