BOOK REVIEW: In Pale Battalions

Oh, the wondrous things one finds when cleaning the back row of the bottom shelf of a bookcase. Author Robert Goddard was unknown to me, but a copy of his IN PALE BATTALIONS caught my attention and I have added another author to my must read list.

Leonora Galloway’s life had all of the signs of a good Gothic novel. She had been born ten months after her father had been killed fighting in France during the first World War and her mother had died shortly after. Sent to live with her paternal grandfather and his young wife at the decaying manor Meongate, her life became one of loneliness and cold cruelty.

During World War I, Meongate had been opened to select soldiers who needed the peaceful English country side to recover from their wounds. Instead of peace, they found a suspiciously pregnant young widow, a murder, a suicide and a general atmosphere of wrongness. This veil of evil continues to hang over the manor as Leonora grows to adulthood.

As Leonora reaches the end of her own life, she goes back to try to solve all of the mysteries of the family that had so many devastating events in its history.

The plot to IN PALE BATTALIONS is so much more than a typical Gothic novel. Author Robert Goddard takes the reader from the killing fields of Flanders and the horrors of war to the hidden evil of a once elegant English country estate.

His characters are complex. The fact that the story is told from several different points of view, we get a chance to see some of their motivations. I liked the many levels exposed of even some very minor characters from soldiers about to be killed on battlefields to flamboyant artists of the pre beatnik generation.  Even with being able to get into some of the main characters’ heads, there are some mysterious events left unexplained - as there should be.     

Most of all, I loved the mood that Goddard was able to create. The book has an old fashioned feel to it. There is a formality to the language that gives a dignity to the people living within the pages. Considering the time span, from 1916 to the present, it rang authentic. It reminded me in many ways of Daphne du Maurier’s  Rebecca. We have the brooding country estate, the young innocent protagonist, and the evil antagonist.

I liked IN PALE BATTALIONS for the fact that we met some very heroic characters. ( I thought Rebecca’s characters a little wimpy). Here are people who had to make moral judgements, whether it concerned keeping dangerous secrets or facing death during war.

I hope Robert Goddard’s other books are as strong.