Review: A Future Arrived

A Future Arrived
Passing Bells, Book 3

Author: Phillip Rock
Pages: 450
Publisher: William Morrow
Source: Publisher via TLC Book Tours

Description from Goodreads:
Before "Downton Abbey", there was Abingdon Priory...The final installment of the saga of the Grevilles of Abingdon, beginning as the dizzy gaiety of the Jazz Age comes to a shattering end and concluding with German bombers coursing toward England. The theater of this books is the '30s, a decade of change and uncertainty, as all the old guidelines are swept away. "A Future Arrived" is a novel of the young, born during or just after "the war to end all wars". They grow to young adulthood as the inheritors of the hatred spawned by the Treaty of Versailles: Derek Ramsey, born only weeks after his father fell in France; the American writer, Martin Rilke, whose family roots in scandal entwine with those of the Stanmores, but who will conquer his questionable heritage by the worldwide fame that will soon come to him; the exquisitely beautiful Wood-Lacy twins, Jennifer and Victoria, and their passionate younger sister, Kate. In their heady youth and bittersweet growth to adulthood, they are the future-but the shadows that touched the lives of the generation before are destined to reach out to their own.

Prior Books in Series:
1: The Passing Bells
2: Circles of Time

First Sentence: "Spring came at last after a winter of snow and icy winds that had sent trees crashing in the tangled depths of Leith Wood and had blocked the narrow country roads with drifts."

Review:
Those who have been following along know that I really enjoyed the first two books in this trilogy, and had every expectation of finding the final book a four star read like the prior two. Sadly, A Future Arrived, while still good, did not quite rise to the level of The Passing Bells and Circles of Time. To be fair, I really wasn't in the mood for a historical fiction novel when I read it, but, still, I stick to my evaluation.

In A Future Arrived, Rock tackles both the year 1930 and the early period of WWII, from 1938 to 1940. Herein lies one of the major weaknesses of the book. These are both historically significant time periods, and the former at least could really benefit from more fiction. However, by combining them into just one volume, even a fairly massive one like this, Rock does both a disservice. Better to have had two more novels in the series or to solely cover the entry into World War II, since that predominates his interest.

The section set in 1930 does include some historical background about the impact of the Great Depression, but comes across largely as a means to introduce a whole swath of new characters. These new figures are predominantly the third generations, grandchildren to Lord and Lady Stanmore, children of the main characters of the previous two novels. The elder Standmores, now in their late 60s to early 70s hardly figure in the plot at all at this juncture.

The new characters are delightful. I really do like every single one of them, but the sheer mass of them was a bit overwhelming. No, it wasn't difficult keeping them all straight, but, since Rock didn't drop the prior main characters entirely, I found the narrative overwhelmed with perspectives. A Future Arrived focuses on far too many characters, especially since I found the sections about the adults boring, as, now that they're all married off, they can apparently only appear for the purposes of boring exposition. The novel feels much more fragmented and distracted than the previous two.

Part of that feeling stems from a change in his writing style. Rock might have made use of ellipses before, but I didn't particularly notice. A Future Arrived is lousy with this particular punctuation. Don't get me wrong; I appreciate the power of the ellipsis, but a little goes a long way. Flip to a page and odds are high that you will find at least one ellipsis, and probably more than one. While sometimes they made sense, they often felt needless, expressing a pause that really added nothing to the flow of the dialogue.

The main themes covered are themselves quite clever, highlighting the real change in morals from the days of the Stanmores to the 1940s. Where a love affair was tawdry and shocking, meriting family disapproval and possibly even expulsion in 1918, by 1938 they're held openly and without shame. The attitudes, like the landscape, has evolved to something more similar to life in 2012 than in 1912. Watching this shift occur through the three novels has been fascinating.

Rock's take on WWII does differ from much of what I've read, focusing almost entirely on the boredom of war. There are a couple of dramatic fight scenes, but mostly he showcases the waiting around, the lack of action. Throughout it feels as though the war has hardly started, even though it really has. While I appreciate that he took a different tack, a focus on the boredom of war turned out to be just as boring as it sounds. I found myself skimming the war passages in an effort to resist falling asleep.

Rock goes a bit crazy pairing everybody off in this installment. It's like he's a yenta or something. He also is really hesitant to kill anybody. As was the case in The Passing Bells, he kills off one major character and that's it. However, it's less dramatic now, since the cast has doubled at this point. Of the three generations of main characters, only ONE dies in the course of 18 years, a couple of which include WWII? Really? To top it all off, the character left single (almost the only person not in a couple by that point) by that death immediately finds a new love on the LAST PAGE OF THE BOOK. I really can't even with that ending.

Despite all of my whining (thanks for letting me get that out), I did enjoy A Future Arrived. Rock's trilogy is a lot of fun, a must for fans of WWI and WWII fiction or of Downton Abbey.

Rating: 3/5

Favorite Quote: "'War,' he said to Albert, 'is truly the province of madness.'"