Messenger of Truth

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great insight submitted by camelsamba on July 11, 2013, 6:39pm As I read this series, I am struck not so much by the sense of the place (1930s London), but by how much insight the author gives us into the plight if those who served in the war. It's not just the physical injuries (gas in lungs, shrapnel in legs, etc.), but how it affects them mentally. It always makes me think of those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Supposedly we know a lot more about PTSD and TBI and so on, but can we really truly understand how it affects someone to have served in active combat?

Example quote:
Frowning, Georgina replied. "Well, that's the thing, I believe he must have, because I can just remember him saying that it was terrible what war could do, to change a man, to bring about a sort of anarchy where soldiers---human beings---would do something out of fear."
"Fear?"
"Yes, that fear we have of someone who was one of us, but who has now changed. Nick always said that he wanted to show how people were joined, how they were the same, that it was something sacred. And he said that's what scared people---people like those men---seeing something terrible that could so easily have been them, so they have to destroy it. Mob rule." She shook her head. "And isn't it funny, that 'sacred' can be 'scared,' if you jiggle the letters around a bit."
(p 156)


And on a different note:
...Something had been ignited within her in that house. If her soul were a room, it was as if light were now shining in a corner that had been dark. And she'd been touched by something less tangible, something she'd found among people who saw nothing unusual In painting trees on walls. Perhaps it was the freedom to strike out on one's path, seeing not a risk in that which was new, only opportunity.
(p 311 - foreshadowing for new direction in next book??)