Wow – Mesmerising

A Soldier’s Return by Paul Carlin is an absolutely fantastic and compelling dual timeline novel that gripped me from the start. It is set in 2014 and from 1914 during World War I in an old manor house.

Paul Carlin draws the reader in from the start as there is an air of mystery and menace that has the reader asking questions – why do the villagers want nothing to do with the old house? The manor house holds its secrets and we want to know the answers.

1914 was a bygone age of masters and servants. Society was still very much class based. Morals and values were definitely slanted towards the upper classes. The lower classes must do as they were told or suffer the consequences.

War was terrible. World War I produced cannon fodder using young men on both sides. “The men they were fighting, the men they were raining bombs on, were no different to them.” Strip away the uniforms and the men were all the same. Paul Carlin has captured the horrors of World War I with his full descriptions.