All Lessons Learned

All Lessons Learned (2018) Charlie Cochrane (Cambridge Fellows)

Set in England and France in 1919.

The war they said would end all conflicts.

Only time would tell if that were true, that never again would Europe march into battle, but plenty of lives had been invested in trying to test the supposition, young men laid to rest among the poppies and mud. A generation blighted as surely as if the horsemen of the apocalypse had passed through. Maybe they had.

As much as I had been enjoying this series, I stopped cold at this book.

Orlando is back and Cambridge, but alone. Jonty was killed in the war, Mr and Mrs Stewart died of the fly and Orlando is existing, but not much more than that.

I knew that since the series continued that Jonty wasn’t really dead, but Orlando believed it, and I just have not wanted to read about that much grief. (Especially since so few people knew just how deeply Orlando was mourning.)

So, I sat down and skimmed much of the first part of the book.

Orlando is asked by a mother to determine if her son actually died in the war, or is somewhere on the continent, injured–or perhaps in a new life after having fled the battlefield.

This story deals not just with grief, but with just how ugly so many aspects of the Great War were–including deserters being shot to keep others from running away from the battle.

It was a brutal war–something that I think can be glossed over when we consider it from 100 years out. The tools of war had changed, but the ways wars were fought had not caught up, and that created an absolute horror for the men who fought–and the men and women who treated their many injuries.

It was not a bad book, but it was one I might never been in the mood for, so I read it so I can move on.

Publisher: Lume Books

Rating: 6/10

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