A review by oliverlang
In Memoriam by Alice Winn

dark emotional relaxing sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

It took me a minute to get into this book and connect with the characters but now I'm certain I'll be rereading this.
(I was thinking about the rating of this as I went and it only kept climbing so I'm defaulting to 5 stars for the minute. We shall see if my eventual reread upholds this.)

This was stunning and incredibly managed to capture the guts and brutality of the front lines of war while also providing moments of light and warmth. 

I'm on a constant quest for stories with "old-timey queers" and this delivered exactly what I wanted.

Not really a spoiler, could potentially be described as an anti-content warning but just incase you like to go in knowing nothing about what to expect:
Although this was set in 1914, a time where homosexuality was against the law, this book had a distinctive lack of homophobia woven through it. It seemed that a great deal of the characters were queer themselves or just really cool calm and collected about the whole affair. Slurs are present but not with malicious intent.


I also really like when multiple languages come together and this book gave me French, German and Greek so that was very nice.
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