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Yet it is also a social commentary of that time. Class and gender are measured against the conflict, and the impetus to change a divided, unequal society. I cared about all for them, and it was very difficult to work out who was to trust and who was lying.
Do you get used to this?’ she said at last. ‘All this death – all this…? Does it become normal for you?’ Rather than tell a story of war with a soldier at its center, Philip Gray has crafted a historical thriller in which a gutsy heroine goes searching for answers on the empty battlefields of the Western Front.... Refreshingly different.
This is a brutally unflinching account of war, from a perspective that I hadn’t considered before. I admire the actions of wanting relatives to have a body to mourn, even if they couldn’t be returned home. Looking at all the hard work and effort that goes into the maintenance of war graves today, makes you feel that they were honoured in death, whilst being treated so harshly in war. Creative Writing My writer’s journey and lots of resources to share. My idea bout how to build a story, how to read it, how to savour it, and what to ask off of it
Amy was a fantastic character and I loved seeing her come to life throughout the book, I very much doubt I could do half of what she achieved in this one.
On the desolate battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the dangerous task of gathering up the dead for mass burial. Two Storm Wood follows the stories of three British people whose lives have been affected by war in very different ways: a young woman who boldly sets out to find out what happened to her fiancé, who went missing in action; a soldier tasked with co-ordinating the retrieval of the dead; and a detective sent to investigate what appears to be a series of murders in the empty, devastated landscape. A] splendidly realised historical thriller... Although the novel is deftly plotted and the atmosphere all distorting fog and claustrophobic dugouts, its achievement lies in Gray's finely worked portraits of the pity of war - those damaged by conflict and those who have to deal with its mind-altering consequences. Ji Lin, an apprentice dressmaker, moonlights as a dancehall girl to pay her mother’s debts. One night, Ji Lin’s dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir that leads her on a crooked, dark trail. On the battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the task of gathering up the dead for mass burial.
A] splendidly realised historical thriller….its achievement lies in Gray’s finely worked portraits of the pity of war — those damaged by conflict and those who have to deal with its mind-altering consequences." The Times - James Owen An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. Although the novel is deftly plotted and the atmosphere all distorting fog and claustrophobic dugouts, its achievement lies in Gray's finely worked portraits of the pity of war - those damaged by conflict and those who have to deal with its mind-altering consequences. The TimesA fast paced thriller set in the immediate post war period of World War One where a young aristocratic women against her families advice goes to the battlefields of France to look for the body of her fiancé who has been reported missing in action. The haunting way in which this is described meant I could actually feel the eyes of the dead on me while reading, and that takes a lot for me to feel something like that, and you know it’s a great book when this happens.
Immersive and eerily atmospheric, Gray’s novel delivers vivid historic detail and gripping suspense, aligning more closely with Dan Simmons’s Drood(2009) and Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollowthan to most WWI thrillers. For some unknown reason, I don’t normally gravitate towards WW1 books when I’m reading, but that may change after reading this one. It was the perfect blend of thriller and historical fiction that had me on the edge of my seat more than once while reading it.This was a fascinating book which I found gripping, and difficult to step away from. The utter bleakness of the battlefields is painted in shades of unrelenting brown and grey, and the mud almost becomes another character in the book. The unravelling of the mystery is not a sudden reveal, but a gradual discovery like the identification of a decayed body. It is a book that communicates even more on a re-read as the knowledge of the conclusion gives more weight to seemingly throwaway sentences. I think this is a book that would be of interest to thriller readers and those interested in the First World War, but would also appeal to a wider audience.
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