Customer Reviews

Fallen Skies: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Gregory is a master story-teller, this engaging novel set in 1920's England shortly after the end of World War I. Stephen Winters is a medaled officer, returned to the bosom of his wealthy family, expected to step into the empty shoes of his brother Christopher, who was killed in the war. Stephen has his own war stories, but never speaks of them, except to his batman and chauffeur, Coventry, his mute companion. Profoundly damaged by his war experiences, the young Winters' heir hides the depths of his emotional wounds, his rages rare but violent. The family home is quiet as the grave, Stephen's father, Rory, felled by a stroke after Christopher's death, his luminous dark eyes unable to communicate from a twisted face and worthless body. Muriel Winters cannot find rapport with her son, the unsaid between them more powerful than any conversation and her nagging guilt at having goaded her second-born into a war that annihilated his already cloudy soul.

Singer Lily Valance, only seventeen, is a refreshing antidote to the nightmares that have haunted Stephen since his return. Even the knowledge that she is a chorus girl is assuaged by the purity of her lovely voice and the diligence of a mother who protects her innocent daughter from male admirers. As soon as he sees Lily perform, Stephen knows she is the antidote to his fury and discontent, that Lily will heal the wounds of the past. On the cusp of a successful career, thanks to the efforts of music director and friend, Charlie Smith, Lily's path to success is clear. Suddenly Stephen is everywhere pressing his suit, shadowing Lily's every move. Intimidated by his aggressive courtship, Lily turns to Charlie, who can never make her his wife. But fate intervenes and Lily is forced into life-changing decisions in the midst of unfathomable grief.

And there is Stephen, soft-spoken, iron-willed, offering his protection and love. Lily marries her ardent suitor, thrust into a world of strict proprieties, a singing career suddenly inappropriate. And Stephen's panacea is short-lived as reality intrudes on fantasy. As a rigid mother-in-law, compassionate but helpless father-in-law and Stephen's man, the mute Coventry, struggle to adapt to the high spirits of Lily's youthful enthusiasm, the fragile hopes she has for her marriage are exposed as a sham. Lily learns first-hand the terrible cost of war, her marriage battered by upheaval and violence as a helpless Charlie watches from the outside. From love to madness, joy to despair, Gregory's characters grapple with their situations, tentative alliances, demons revealed in a tragic denouement that shatters the night. Gregory writes with a rhythm and style all her own, high drama and dense prose that wounds and expunges, human failings stripped of pretense one by one. But Lily is a survivor, a girl grown to womanhood in the harsh landscape of a deeply troubled marriage: "We've got to live no matter how many skies have fallen" (DH Lawrence). Luan Gaines/2008.

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.

This book starts out strong, then crawls, gets exciting at about 3/4 of the way through, but leaves many unanswered questions. You can't help but feel sympathy for the main character, Lily, who is married to a man she doesn't love and whose husband's family adheres to the strict formality of upper-class England. Nothing unseeming should ever occur in their household. Ironically, what happens between Lily and her husband is enough to make even the lowliest of English families cringe, if only they knew. The strict upper-class attitudes of the family should be reminiscent of what it must be like for young, innocent girls who marry into certain royal families and are forced to live with the consequences. Overall, several of the characters could have been taken in a much different direction toward the end of the story, if only to give Lily more sympathy and friends. It might also have resolved a few more issues, such as what happens between Lily and her true love, Charlie. This book needs a more satisfying ending!!

I think I have read all of Philippa Gregory's work. Fallen Skies was unique in the structure of the last few chapters in the book. The level of suspense and the finely crafted web of facts and characters all come together for the best who-done-it ending I have ever read. The book would not be characterized by most as a mystery but I couldn't help but marvel at Gregory's expertise and compare her to the best of mystery writers. The historical and social aspects of the story are as good as any she has written, but again, the suspense at the end is brilliant.

I've read 10+ of Philippa Gregory's historical novels, and enjoyed them all. However, when I was first reading it, I didn't much care about either of the two main characters or what happened to them. They both had plenty of flaws. Just when I would begin to sympathize with one of them, they make another bad decision.

I'm updating now since I finished the book yesterday. Once I decided which characters I wanted to root for, I became more engaged in the story.

The author crafts several intriguing plot twists, and more than one dark secret is revealed by the end. She kept me riveted for the last few chapters - I literally could not put it down!

My overall opinion is that this a very powerful anti-war novel, and provides the reader with a lot of ideas to ponder.

It is VERY rare that I don't finish a book. It's even rarer for me to give a book one star, but this was just painful. I've read a few of Philippa Gregory's novels and I absolutely loved them. I was excited to dig into some of her older work, but good grief. This was soooooo sloooooow. And Stephen is beyond unlikeable. I found myself wondering, after his first misstep with Lily, why she would ever have anything to do with him again? She clearly doesn't care for him the way he cares for her...she even told him so! So WHY would she continue seeing him knowing how he feels about her? And why would her super protective mother allow it, even after Lily told her how she felt?

I'm extremely annoyed that I shelled out $12.99 for the Kindle edition of this (a book that's 17 years old!!), and it was so bad. I'll definitely still read Ms. Gregory's historical novels as they are incredibly entertaining, but this was just no good for me. I see that a bunch of people really enjoyed this, and I wanted to, but I just couldn't get past the my supreme dislike for Stephen, a main character...not to mention his mute chauffeur Coventry who is incredibly creepy! Yet another turn off for me. While I can't in all good conscience recommend this book, I DO recommend trying her newer novels. Ms. Gregory is really at her best when she's writing historical fiction.

The author is well-known for her historical novels about royal personages, but this book, first published in 1993 and re-issued in 2008, is among her best and is timely in this era of war. It is set in the immediate aftermath of World War I in England. A veteran, a former officer, from an upper-class family is haunted by war nightmares. He falls in love with a pretty, very young music-hall performer, seeing in her naivete the pre-war innocence he misses. The impoverished girl reluctantly marries her rich swain. Gradually, we realize that he suffers secretly from what is now called "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" and, furthermore, he was not an emotionally-steady person when he went to war. Indeed, the war gave him the opportunity to work off his underlying anger at being the less-beloved of two sons by killing "the enemy". I can see why some audiences, especially the British, may not have taken to a book that says that some "heroes" were nothing of the kind. Current readers know that atrocities are not committed only by the other side; we may be shocked and saddened but we are no longer surprised. The fast-moving, dramatic plot deals with the young wife's difficult chore of dealing with her increasingly-demented husband.

I've enjoyed Gregory's Elizabethan-period novels very much, but this, an earlier effort, is one of the best books I've read in years. She takes time, in this novel, to let us know the characters, and care about them, even the antagonistic ones. The pace begins gradually, and gathers momentum as it goes along, until the reader can hardly tear herself away from the book to go to work! A masterful novel of period and character and even social commentary. Fantastic.

Before writing my own, I was reading the other readers' reviews and I tend to agree with them overall: it's a good story, plenty of suspense building, and yes, the last few chapters DID keep me rapidly turning pages.
But when I got to the last page, I turned it for more... and there WERE no more. That's it?! Rather than "ending," it just seemed to stop.
Just felt unfinished to me.
That's what kept me from giving this book more stars.

I've read all of Philipa Gregory's novels, and I'm a big fan of her historical fiction, so I thought I'd give this one a try as well. Some of the violent parts of the book were hard to read, but I thought the characters were really well done- even though Stephan was a 'bad guy,' there were times were I felt sorry for him, and could empathize with him. None of the characters were pure evil or perfectly good either. The story started out a little slow, but I soon got caught up in it. I would definitely suggest reading it.