In Pale Battalions Audiobook by Robert Goddard
Listen to this audiobook in full for free on http://hotaudiobook.com [http://hotaudiobook.com]
Title: In Pale Battalions
Author: Robert Goddard
Narrator: Jilly Bond
Format: Unabridged
Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-19-17
Publisher: Audible Studios
Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Suspense
Publisher's Summary:
Six months after the sudden death of her husband, Leonora Galloway sets out on a trip to France with her daughter Penelope. At last the time has come when secrets can be shared and explanations begin....
Leonora takes her daughter to the battlefields of WW1, where her father is commemorated on the Thiepval Monument. But the date of his death is surprising and reveals that Captain John Hallows cannot possibly have been Leonora's real father.
This is only the start of a series of revelations that span three generations of a distinguished aristocratic family who are not what they seem. Penelope must piece together a tale of war, of loss, of greed, deception and vice - and the perpetrator of a murder left unsolved for more than half a century....
Members Reviews:
The "feeling" of the Great War.
In 1988, British novelist Robert Goddard published a multi-generational novel called, "In Pale Battalions". Set in England and the battlefields of France and Picardy during the Great War, Goddard has written an excellent novel that exposes feelings and attitudes of those fighting at the time, and how their lives and sacrifices trickled down to affect future generations, as well as the madness and the lies and deceptions resulting from certain mad acts. It's now almost 30 years after publication of the original book, and 2014 is the 100th year anniversary of the beginning of that war. It's a fine time to discover Goddard's novel.
We have been deluged so far with books about the Great War, both fiction and non-fiction. While the works of non-fiction tell the best story of the war with facts, many works of fiction tell the "feeling" of the war. The story in "Pale Battalions" is very complicated and is told in the first-person voices of three characters. All these characters interacted - to a degree - between 1904 and 1969, but the story they tell is all a bit compromised because they are somewhat "unreliable narrators". But does having an "unreliable narrator" mean that we - the readers - shouldn't believe what they're saying? I don't think so in this case.
Basically, this story is about Leonora Gallaway and her search for the truth of her family. Supposedly conceived 11 months after the death of her father in battle, she was mistreated by her father's family after her mother died in childbirth and she was turned over to their care. Secrets that seemingly began in that secluded country house during the war, actually began a few years earlier. Identities were blurred, murders occurred - both on and off the battlefield - and the revelations which come out years after the war are shocking to the reader.
"In Pale Battalions" is expertly written by Robert Goddard. While some reviewers have written that the pace is slow, I think most readers interested in the period and the characters will find it quite good.
An Agatha Christie bodice ripper
I was drawn to âIn Pale Battalionsâ because of its World War 1 background and the large number of 5-star reviews on the bookâs Amazon site. But I found the bookâs connection with WW1 exiguous, comprising only a few canned scenes in the trenches. I must also dissent from the 5-star majority, finding that the bookâs prime virtue, its complex plot, required characters who were mere automatons clanking through Goddardâs ingenious mechanism.
