The Dust That Falls from Dreams

The four McCosh sisters grow up between the well-mannered Pendennis boys and the wild Pitt boys in Edwardian England. Then along comes World War I to shake up everyone's lives.

The research the author put into this story was evident on every page and that is the book's strength and its weakness: I want to fall into the historical setting but I don't want to be prodded and poked and reminded of it.

Fortunately, that's not the book's only strength; the characters are delightfully real. And the plot spins along nicely. My enjoyment of the book grew as I read along, and that doesn't always happen with me when I read a 500+ page book like this.

Very readable, as de Bernieres always is, but even for a 500 page book it feels slight and somewhat hackneyed - this is ground that has been covered many times before. It feels as if the book was written with one eye on the lavish Sunday evening BBC adaptation. An afterword suggests future volumes are to come, which may be a saving grace - I'd be intrigued to see a multi volume Dance To The Music Of Time style project from LdB.