Unlike Regeneration, which can function as a stand-alone novel quite apart from its place as the first in the trilogy, I think both the subsequent books require the knowledge of the characters and the circumstances that comes with Regeneration. Billy Prior, who has somewhat of a secondary role in Regeneration, as opposed to Rivers and Sassoon, takes centre stage this time, and despite being one of the few fictional characters in this trilogy, is arguably the most fascinating.

Prior is a working-class officer, working in Intelligence when he longs to be back at the Front, investigating anti-war pacifists, most of whom he grew up with as a child, bisexual, neither fish nor fowl and the strains of this shatter his psyche and he suffers from memory lapses, blackouts and even a split personality. He's a wonderful, brittle, hard-edged character, eminently memorable, and a heartbreaking example of the inner wounds war can inflict on even the strongest of characters.

Many people make the mistake of thinking of this trilogy as a 'war trilogy' and that does it a disservice, almost. It's so much more. The Western Front only makes a physical appearance in the final novel - this is a trilogy about the mental scars of war, about the pressures of government and politics during war, about the evolution of mental health care, about sexuality and national pride. I think this is my favourite book of the trilogy.

Another wonderful book about war and how it fractures men and societies. Rivers and Sassoon don't seem as strongly drawn as they were in Regeneration, but Prior slogs through it all, king of the lower class, compassionate savior, and sadist.

Not as moving as the last one, in the end, but I appreciated the slow, surprising ways we learn more about Rivers. I like Prior a lot as a character but as others have said, the fugue state plotline is cheesy, and Prior doesn’t really *go* anywhere over the course of the story. This is really a book (a series) of beautifully described scenes - the character arcs shine through only at the seams. I can’t blame Barker for that since it’s clearly intentional, even if it’s not quite the book I would want it to be.

I saw in the historical note at the end that real-life Rivers died in 1922 - so tragically soon!


I read a 2014 paperback edition published by Plume (Penguin Random House) and printed in the US. For some reason GR doesn’t have the edition I read included in its list, but the cover was designed by Jason Booher.