Cheap Fallen Skies (Book) (Philippa Gregory) Price

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Customer Reviews of Fallen Skies

WORLD WAR I VETS VIVIDLY PORTRAYED
I discovered Philippa Gregory within the last year and have now read five of her books, Fallen Skies being the most recent. As always, she has created multi-dimensional characters where it's possible to even feel some sympathy for the "villain" of the piece. The heroine of the book, Lily Vallance, is very much a product of her times when roles for women were quite restrictive. Gregory does a great job of portraying just how much power husbands had over their wives in the early part of the last century. Her husband, World War I vet, Stephen Winters, is a tragic figure although to state he was purely a product of the horrors of the war may not be quite true. His own upbringing and profound sibling rivalry also had to have played a part in the man he became in the trenches of Belgium.

The supporting characters of Charlie, Lily's true love, Muriel, Stephen's mother and Coventry, Stephen's chauffeur/best friend are wonderfully written. I especially enjoyed Gregory's constant reference to the food that "Cook" served the family during the rigidly proscribed meal times. She ably described the societal customs of the upper middle class and how Lily constantly chafed at them.

This is not a romance novel, by any means, but a fascinating story of what happened to the generation of men who fought in World War I and the impact of this on those left on the home front.

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A compelling, if wrenching, book about World War I England
Fallen Skies is a delicately written book full of dark and terrible imagery. The main character of the book is Lily Valance, a naive young singer who longs for fame. Lily catches the eye of WWI vet Stephen Winters, a middle class man who has been scarred beyond belief by his fighting experiences. He determines to marry her, despite the fact she herself is more concerned with singing and the elusive, attractive piano player Charlie. The lives of these three people intertwine, and lead both to tragedy and joy. A word of warning - the story is wonderful, yet some of the images (Stephen's flashbacks from the war) are explicit and brutal. If you are looking for a fascinating read that studiously avoids cliches, then I would definetly reccommend this book!

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misleading!
I bought this book because the description on the cover made it out to be a great romance novel about love and war. Instead, this book is twisted, dark and just a big let down. The many tragic events in the book are just too extreme and depressing. Not only that, but once you get to the last chapters the ending becomes very predictable and feels as though it was done in a rush because the author already drove the book into such darkness that she needed to find something (no matter how unimaginative) and quick. I would'nt recommend this book to anyone looking for something romanic or uplifting and I don't think that publishers should mislead buyers with their book descriptions.