Malone's iconoclastic third collection is an audacious attempt to rejuvenate the vernacular of war poetry, a remarkable Great War diptych in which the later dissenting voices of The Unreturning  sequence parlay with the more traditional elegiac modes of the trench lyric.
 
"The Unreturning is a powerful, stunning piece of work. It has to be essential reading for  anyone interested either in the writing of the First World War or in its history. But more than that, this s the work of a master craftsman, someone who is sure of his 
aim and sure of his talent. A poet  of rare distinction, a book of rare skill; that encapsulates ​The Unreturning​." 
                                                                   Siegfried's Journal.
 
"Somewhat reminiscent of the early work of Geoffrey Hill, perhaps most particularly of Mercian Hymns, Malone’s work manages to convey the anguish of a deeply moral sensibility by playfully upending and reinventing traditional lyric tropes and by using the prose poem as a form which provides both a scaffold and a restraint for his uncompromising vision." 
                                                              Poetry Ireland Review