The voices of Danger

'Do you know what war is?' asks the sensitive and disenchanted RSM Allcock at one point in this powerful and challenging novel, subsequently going on to provide his own answer: 'Old Men killing Young Men. That's what war is.' Much later, in tragic circumstances, the two young men who are at the story's centre recall his words and recognize their truth in relation to their own experiences in the horrors of World War One. This is a book full of anger at what humans are capable of doing in the name of patriotism. Alex and Seb, the working class lads whom we meet initially as 16-year-old choristers in an English cathedral school, pursue their military dream as far as the Somme, only to witness the dream become the nightmare which, as Alex eventually understands, has indelibly 'marked' them. As for Tarrington, the young aristocrat who had bullied his way through school with them, aspirations of fame and power are to crumble also when all three destinies entwine once more on foreign fields. Rowe portrays brilliantly the developing personalities in this triangle of relationships, giving us a young adult novel of remarkable strength of purpose.