Richard Howard (4)

I am attracted to books about the Napoleonic wars. Bernard Cornwall in his Sharpe series is the gold standard in my opinion. I have read others as well and enjoyed them all.

This book attracted me because it told the story from the French side. Cornwall described in exquisite detail battles and the workings of the English army under Wellington including on the French methods of attack.

This book does very little of that. It has the bones of a decent plot, that being prisoners of Paris jails liberated from certain death from the guillotine for petty crimes on the condition they fight in the French cavalry (Dragoons).

But the book jumps along from event to event quickly. The characters in the story are sooooo one dimensional... the aristocrat whose family has been executed , the rapist, the religious, the school teacher, the Russian, the fat guy...the kind officer, the brutal officer. Characters never evolve in the story. Their comments are so predictable.

A writing device that I hated in this book was the sprinkling of the phrase "The other men laughed" or minor variations of this "Some of the other men laughed" or "the men around the fire laughed". It is like the author does not have the conviction that his prose of the moment is funny or sarcastic enough to be recognized as humourous ... so he adds this written "laugh track" to his writing.... it annoyed me to no end.

The story is readable but just. I doubt I gained any insight into the workings of the French military during this period and certainly nothing of its tactics in fighting. The battle scenes have the requisite gore, and slashing but none of the subtly of description that intrigues one as in Cornwell's novels.

Perhaps I am biased in this regard but this just does not measure up for me... though I did read it to the end and this of course a start of a series...but I doubt I will read any more.… (more)