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There are currently 40 member reviews
for The Daughters of Mars
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Dorothy L. (Manalapan, NJ)
A Difficult Read
There are some good things about this book--its scope, range, and detailed description of World War I from a perspective I sometimes found interesting. But on the whole I would not recommend it to friends or my book club. I found it very difficult to read because of all the exposition and lack of quotation marks for dialogue. In a five hundred page book, I found this structure a serious problem. Why create barriers for the reader? Often the book was tedious and I sometime felt the minor characters were more engaging than the sisters. I felt that the large scope had positive aspects, but for me, it was too much and should have been edited better. It took me two thirds of the novel to really get into it and then I wondered at the end whether the effort was worth it. Yes, I learned a great deal about WWI from an interesting perspective but I waded through it because I was reviewing it and not because I was enjoying the experience. And while the ending was different, I have to wonder if the lack of a clear resolution in itself was a reflection of other ambiguities in the novel.
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Andrea S. (Lafayette, IN)
Tough Read
This was not a book that I took to at all. The subject matter was very emotional and the writing difficult to adapt to. I think it is more literary type fiction than I would ever want to read, but perhaps others will find it fascinating. There is a lot for a book club to discuss though, including the war, women's roles in WWI, and family dynamics.
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Jan M. (Broken Arrow, OK)
Hard to Read
I'm sorry to rate this book poor, for it was a wonderful book, but it was hard to read. The sentences go on forever. I realize the purpose was to imitate private journals, but in doing so, it made reading difficult. I found myself re-reading passages in an attempt to understand what the author was saying, and the need to do that took away from the pleasure of the book. Now that said, the story was tremendous. It brought the horrors of the war into my living room. One could almost feel the pain and terror of the casualties. A story well-told, but in dire need of some structural editing.
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Tilli F. (Florence, MA)
Daughters of Mars
This was a difficult book for me to read. This author has a style that puts great distance between this reader and the characters. Thus even though there are many horrible things that happen during the course of the book: the Australian experience at Gallipoli and on the French front during World War One, and deals with the nurses experiences in those catastrophic events, I found myself very distant from the sisters who are the main characters as well as the other nurses. Death, grief, terror - all are experienced by this reader as academic events that are of academic interest. I have felt this way about the other Kaneally books I have read, but thought this one would be different. Sadly, it wasn't. At the end there is a peculiar style which piqued my interest, but it was too little, too late
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Kathryn K. (Oceanside, CA)
Disappointing Read
I had really looked forward to reading Thomas Kennelly's latest book, Daughters of Mars. It is a story about two sisters from Australia, who volunteer to become nurses during WWI. Not knowing much about WWI, it really appealed to me and I had visions of an early 20th century version of M.A.S.H. -- albeit about my grandfather's military. But it was a ponderous read and very disappointing. There were chapters that I found interesting, but without details about the war that would anchor the story, a lot of what I read just got lost in a narrative that didn't make a lot of sense. It was almost as if the writer took a bunch of "stories" and threw them together hoping readers would somehow get it. It was like trying to complete a puzzle with way too many pieces missing. When I finished the last page I just shook my head thinking – what?! It is not a book I would recommend to anyone - least of all, my book groups.
