Synopsis:
After being away for over a year, Alfonse Keller has returned from the trenches on Teuton’s western front, fighting in the war that’s broken out against the Steppes. He should feel relieved now that’s he’s back in his own village in the care of his brother Ernst, but he’s not. It seems like nothing has changed except for him, like he’s a traveler from a different world.
When Alfonse left to join the army, he was a natural magician making a name for himself, but after a tragic incident resulting in the death of his friend, and his own crippling injury, he no longer has the ability to use magic.
Suffering from constant nightmares and revisited trauma, Alfonse can’t get the trenches out of his head. Ernst tries to help, but he doesn’t really understand either. How can he, when Alfonse doesn’t really understand himself? He feels like a phantom, standing on the outskirts of a life he’ll never live again.
As Ernst tries to do everything he can for his brother, he can’t help but feel like Alfonse is slipping away, that maybe part of him never left the trenches at all. But how can he save his brother when Alf refuses to let anyone in?
My Thoughts
I definitely went into this one without remembering that it is a fantasy-history fantasy. Sergeant Major Alphonse Keller has returned to Coldbrooke from the Teutonic-Steppes war a different man than the boy who left home and his older brother, Ernst, a healer. It was deemed that Ernst was of more service in the little village than at the western front.
It’s a bewildering and confusing time and Alfonse has returned with a horrendous case of PTSD before it was truly given a name and understood and guilt over having lived (albeit with serious injuries of his own) when his childhood friend and war buddy died.
He is still beset with ugly nightmares, terrors, and sweats and is a greater problem to heal than his brother has confronted prior. Ernst cannot get a handle on how to treat him, care for him, or get him over this to once again return to a normal, or near normal, life. Alphonse rescues a dog, more savagely wounded than he, and he finds a temporary respite in caring for the dog.
Alphonse used to be a magician and he wielded his magic against his enemies until that fateful skirmish in the tunnel. Even after a truce is declared and the remaining men of the village return, it seems Alphonse continues to revisit the trenches and the tunnel incident that sent him home. Each man has compartmentalized their experience in their own way–some better–several as bad.
Regardless the age, the country, or the century, war is hell. And war, no matter when, exacts the same terrible price on those who would fight. Has Alphonse forever lost his way back to his brother and those who would heal him?
Pre-Order Info
If you pre-order Come Marching Home or just order a copy of it by the end of October (extending because the paperback won’t be available for preorder) You can email the receipt of your purchase to sirwilliamssquire@gmail.com with your address and Hazel will send you a goodie pack!
Link to Amazon
Goodies
-A bookmark
-A sticker with art by H.S.J. Williams @h.s.j._williams
-A playlist curated by Hazel
-And if you order the paperback, you will get a signed bookplate
Social Links
Blog: http://hazelwest.blogspot.com
Come Marching Home on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54493656-come-marching-home
Goodreads Author page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5289626.Hazel_B_West
Twitter: https://twitter.com/artfulscribbler
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/modern_bard67/
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/hazelwest
Purchase links
Giveaway
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Book Details
Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Publisher:
- ASIN : B08K8SNKD8
Print Length: 279 pages
Publication Date: October 13, 2020
About the Author
Hazel B. West is the author of several novels including historical titles like On a Foreign Field, By Blood or By Bond; Wolfsblood, a book about werewolves in Roman Britain and the Modern Tales of Na Fianna series, which feature modern Irish warriors with swords and fast sports cars and lots of faeries.
Hailing from Purgatory (aka, Florida) Hazel is an indie author, book wyrm, and coffee connoisseur. She typically enjoys writing books with an unconventional flair, probably with a bit of folklore and mythology, most definitely with a lot of siblings or brothers-in-arms. When she’s not writing, she manages an Etsy shop, drinks a lot of coffee, listens to music, haunts conventions, or just holes up like an eldritch horror and binges her favorite shows—for inspiration. If you meet this rare creature on the street, she has been known to respond to the offer of coffee and old bookstores. But it’s probably best you try to contact her online first.
©2020 V Williams 
Rosepoint Publishing 