This book has been on my shelf for over a month without another page read. I'm DNFing it and adding it to my list of books characterized by the massive gulf between my anticipation and the reading experience.

My opinion of this book is constantly shifting. I was annoyed with the first few chapters, as it seemed the book's "global history" approach involved a superficial treatment of everything. After the last couple of chapters, though, I appreciate that the first hundred-plus pages were really just a prelude, as once he gets to Boney himself Mikaberidze slows down and takes the space to provide more analysis.

Thanks to Rosie Croft of Pen & Sword for providing me a hardback copy of this book that I freely chose to review.

I was checking the publisher’s catalogue and read the comments about this book, that was a reproduction of the original version, and although I’m no expert in military campaigns or Napoleon (although I suspect, like most people, I’m intrigued by that fascinating historical figure) I felt this was the book to get on the subject. I love art, and a book full of illustrations of the period sounded like a must-have. And I was right.

The book, as some of the reviewers have commented, is all the better for being a straight reproduction, without added comments or attempts at bringing it up to date or explaining and contextualising it. It is old-fashioned, but gloriously so. Oh, it isn’t politically correct either, and I’m not sure any French nationals with strong feelings about Napoleon would appreciate the comments, which, as the description says, are pure British propaganda. A lot of the book centres on the campaign in Spain, for evident reasons, and the book is dedicated to the Duke of Wellington, and I think it is a great example of what books of the period on this subject would have been like, and I’m sure its original quality is reflected in the current edition.

I particularly enjoyed the illustrations, which have something of the naïveté of a talented and skilled amateur (they reminded me of the notebooks people kept in the XVIII and XIX century when they were travelling that often included watercolours or pencil drawings of the places they visited). The written accounts of the battles and episodes are aggrandising and do not go into deep analysis, but include war dispatches, lists of some of the fallen and wounded, easy-to-read descriptions of the events (how accurate is another matter), and also letters that at times can bring the real people to life for us. As a small example, the chapter “The Death of Moreau, 28^th August 1813” includes a letter General Moreau addressed to his wife, three days after his wounding:

My dear Love, — At the battle of Dresden, three days ago, I had both legs carried off by a cannon-ball. That scoundrel Buonaparte is always fortunate. The amputation was performed as well as possible. Though the army has made a retrograde movement, it is not at all consequence of defeat, but from a want of ensemble, and in order to get nearer General Blücher. Excuse my hasty writing. I love and embrace thee with my whole heart. I charge Rappatel to finish. (Jenkins, 2018, pp. 117-8).

I recommend this book to anybody interested in military history, particularly in the Napoleonic campaigns, in art of the era, or who simply enjoy books from the XIX century and would like to have an excellent quality replica of a book of the era. This is a collectable for those who love books as artworks and it brings to life an era past but not forgotten.

Jenkins, J.J. (2018, originally published 1815). The Napoleonic Wars as illustrated by J.J. Jenkins. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Military.

Young sailor Edmond Dantés is well-meaning, kind and really rather naive, wanting nothing more than to make enough money to take care of his elderly father and marry his beloved Mercedes. There are other, less well-meaning people in his life who want what he has and are prepared to frame Dantés for treason to get these things. While celebrating his engagement to Mercedes, Dantés is arrested, charged with aiding in a plot to restore the exiled Napoleon to the throne. The anonymous scheming may have come to nought, except a letter in Dantés' possession frames the father of the judge who hears his case, and said man decides that the best thing to do is burn the letter, and lock Dantés away, before the precious judge is implicated in the scandal. So thanks to a drunken, malicious prank and an unscrupulous judge, Dantés is locked up away in a dark dungeon for fourteen years, where he nearly goes mad, while his father dies alone and destitute and his Mercedes marries another.

Dantés probably would have lost his mind if not for the friendship with another prisoner, the Abbot Feria, who, when trying to dig an escape tunnel, instead ends up in Dantés' cell. The two strike up a friendship and Feria, a very learned man, teaches the fairly inexperienced sailor everything he knows. He listens patiently to Dantés' story of how he ended up being imprisoned, and explains exactly how he will have ended up being framed, turning Dantés' thoughts immediately to escape and revenge. Initially, the two are planning to escape the prison together. But the Abbott is old and sick and dies before they have a chance to get out. He tells Dantés of a great treasure, hidden away on the island of Monte Cristo. Once Dantés escapes, he goes there, and discovers riches beyond his wildest dreams. After fourteen years, with everyone who ever knew him believing him long dead, Dantés can start truly plotting his revenge.

Ten years after the escape, the mysterious and brooding Count of Monte Cristo appears in Paris and soon the lives of three prosperous and successful gentlemen start falling apart completely.

I'm convinced that it is more than twenty years since I first read this book, when I was still young and patient and felt that the longer the book, the better, frankly (this was back when I also happily read my mother's three volume edition of Les Misérables in about four days while stuck at my gran's in the west of Norway, a book I only got about a third of the way through once I tried re-reading it a few years back. To be fair, this was a time long before wifi and smart phones, the only thing to do when in the west of Norway was to read. What else was I going to do, hang out with my douchy cousins, or worse yet, my little brother?) When the Cannonball Book Club poll for Classics ended up picking the LONGEST book of all of the ones nominated (I want to point out that I picked The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - at a neat 350 pages), it wasn't like I had a choice but to read the book, and I certainly wasn't going to opt for some abridged version. That would be cheating. This is also why this book will now forever be known to me as the book that ate November.

I actually started it in mid-October, but it became really obvious that as long as I was allowing myself to read other books as well, I was just never going to get through the nearly thousand pages of 19th Century French adventure fiction. Hence the only books I finished in November except this, were the ones I listened to in audio. In the end, I completed the book on November 30th, the day before our book club discussion. The Norwegian translation I read was done in the 1950s, but was thankfully not too difficult to get into, once I got used to some of the more old-fashioned terms. The first third or so, until Dantés finally escapes prison and goes to the island to find the treasure, moves along at a fair clip and is quite exciting. The problem came when he returns after ten years, and Dumas spends a lot of time re-establishing all the characters (who obviously no longer go by the same names they did at the beginning of the book, that would be far too easy) and setting the stage for Dantés' truly masterful revenge scenario. Once the book really gets going on that, it's all pretty thrilling, right up until the end.

It's not for nothing that this is known as one of the great revenge stories of all time. It was also, obviously written in a time when books like this, sold in instalments, were the big network entertainments of their day. Over the course of eighteen months, people would only get sixty pages at a time. That's a long time to wait to see how Dantés deals out righteous vengeance on the guys who did him wrong and made themselves rich and successful thanks in part to his misfortune. I wish I could say that I read it, considering where the instalment breaks would have been and fully aware of how the entertainments of our day have changed (all points covered in our excellent book club discussion), but I totally didn't. I mainly just forced myself through it, in between correcting a LOT of essays and audio book listening, wanting to get through the early Paris sections, where I had to use Wikipedia to help me keep track of the names of all the various parties, their many family members and how exactly they were soap operaishly connected to one another through double dealing, scheming and adultery, so I could understand everything fully once the Count's plan really kicked into gear.

While I don't love it as much as I did when I was a teenager, it's still a great book and for a book written in the mid-19th Century, it has an interestingly varied portrayal of both male and female characters. I was especially excited to see that Dumas apparently thought nothing of having Eugénie Danglars, the daughter of one of the men who wronged Dantés, escape the whole sorry revenge plot by running off with her companion on what I'm assuming will be one heck of a lesbian bohemian adventure. Valentine Villefort, one of the other prominent ladies, is so good and kind and true she makes your teeth hurt, but a lot of the other ladies, not least Mercedes, Dantés' lost love, are very impressive in their own right, this is not just a book about dudes.

While I was initially despairing, as it felt like that my November was pretty much this and correction work, I'm very glad that the Book Club pick did end up being this book, so that I got a chance to finally re-read it. I'd kept telling myself I was going to, and then never getting round to it, because it's sooo long. I also have plans to watch the TV adaptation starring Richard Chamberlain (clearly the go-to actor for Dumas adaptations in the 1970s - as well as playing Dantés, he was Aramis in the Musketeers movies directed by Richard Lester and he also starred in the dual role in The Man with the Iron Mask), but as New Year's is rapidly approaching, I needed to get these reviews completed - no time to watch movies before I blog. I honestly don't know what the abridged versions of the novel leave out, it seemed to me that once you with hindsight can see what is being set up, even the parts of the novel that dragged while reading them were really quite important. I would therefore recommend that you allow yourself the time to read the full version if you try the book. It's worth the effort, I promise.

Judging a book by its cover: For years and years and years, I've been a member of what is called the Norwegian Book Club, which is more of a subscription service for books than an actual club where people get together to read the same book every month and discuss it. It should also be noted that because a) Norwegian hardback books are terribly expensive and b) I barely ever read Norwegian books, I automatically cancel the books of the month every single time. I get the e-mail, I go to the website, I cancel the books. Very occasionally, i use the accompanying website to buy presents for people. All of this is to explain that my two volume edition of Greven av Monte Christo (which is the Norwegian name for the book) is one that I got when I became a member many many years ago, and the cover is nothing very exciting. A silhouette of a man. The background on volume one is dark blue, the background on volume two is golden yellow. Apart from that, they are identical.

This is the fifth book in Joanna Bourne's Spymasters series, but as the books are written out of chronological order historically speaking, and some overlap (for those who HAVE read the previous books in the series, there's a really interesting blog post here explaining where the various books fit into the historical time line), it's not actually that big a deal what order you read them in. If you haven't read any of the others, Bourne herself has suggested that readers will enjoy it more if they've at least read The Black Hawk, where you are given useful back story for the hero of this novel (it's also an amazing historical romance).

From the author's website:

Ten years ago he was a boy, given the name Thomas Paxton and sent by Revolutionary France to infiltrate the British Intelligence Service. Now his sense of honour brings him back to London, alone and unarmed, to confess. But instead of facing the gallows, he's given one last impossible assignment to prove his loyalty.

Lovely, lying, former French spy Camille Leyland is dragged from her safe rural obscurity by threats and blackmail. Dusting off her spy skills, she sets out to track down a ruthless French fanatic and rescue the innocent victim he's holding - only to find an old colleague already on the case. Pax.

Old friendships turn to new love and Pax and Camille's dark secrets loom up from the past. Pax is left with the choice - go rogue from the service or lose Camille forever. 

So Thomas Paxton, known to most of his friends as Pax, is a high ranking spy for the British Secret Service, but was actually trained as a child to be a deep cover spy for the French. The French trained dozens of Cachés, orphaned children and teens, indoctrinating them into following the ideals of the Revolution, and becoming secret agents, assuming the identity of dead (or murdered) British children so as to spread their agents throughout Britain. As many of the other Cachés, Pax hated the French agents who trained him, and did his best to escape the influence of his French masters quickly, by giving them irrelevant information and then disposing of his handler. At the beginning of this book, he has just confessed to his superiors in the Secret Service that he's a French spy and a traitor, and is expecting them to dispose of him.

Of course, Pax has proven himself an excellent spy for Britain, and his bosses don't really want to kill off such a useful asset. They do need him to prove himself loyal without question though, which could prove difficult as Pax recognises one of the faces from his past, another Caché agent, trained to assume the identity of Camille Leyland, niece of the two spinsters responsible for creating Britain's ciphers and cracking the codes of foreign correspondence. Camille has grown to love "the aunts" and when she is blackmailed, she goes to London to hopefully outwit and possibly murder whomever's responsible, to make sure they stay safe. Once she realises that the blackmailer actually has the real Camille Leyland and won't hesitate to kill the woman if Cami (or Verité as the Cachés named her) doesn't agree to his demands, she is forced to reevaluate her plans to make sure the Misses Layland get their real niece back safely.

Camille isn't aware that the man who is blackmailing her is a very dangerous Frenchman long believed dead. Pax recognises him and as their pasts are intertwined, much like Pax and Camille's, he vows to stop the Merchant once and for all, even if it means risking his future with the Service by disobeying direct orders. Working together with Camille for the first time since they were children, Pax discovers that he is developing feelings for his old companion, and will do anything to keep her safe.

I actually re-read The Black Hawk to remind myself of what happened with Pax and his revelations to his superiors about being a French double agent. The action of this book actually overlaps with the latter half of Bourne's first book in the series, The Spymaster's Lady as well. Hawker, hero of The Black Hawk and scene-stealing supporting character is all of the other Bourne Spymaster books, including this one, insists on helping his old friend, despite under orders to stay off active duty due to a recent gunshot wound. It's always fun to see Hawker from the many different points of view he's presented with in these books. Sadly, Pax is a bit bland in comparison. I never really cared about him as a supporting character in the other books, and while he was perfectly fine here, he didn't really wow me, so to speak. 

Camille was a fun heroine, though. Bourne always writes very interesting women, who are just as capable as secret agents, if not more so, than the men. Unlike Annique, Maggie and Justine, who worked actively as spies for at least a while, Camille has not really ever actively worked in the field. She was placed in the Leyland household while she was still a child, and managed to escape the control of her French masters relatively quickly. She's lived a quiet life, using her intelligence to help her "aunts" create and crack codes, but has never been able to forget that hers is a stolen existence and one day it will be time to pay. She's willing to do what she has to in order to keep her loved ones safe, and is completely flummoxed by meeting Pax again and falling in love with him. During their joint quest to bring down the Merchant, Camille/Verité also reconnects with family she believed was lost forever. Instead of being a friendless orphan facing a possible treason charge, she has an extensive family in London, ready to fiercely stand for her.

While Pax wasn't the most charismatic of heroes, I always enjoy Bourne's stories and her beautiful way with language. She conveys foreign languages excellently, even when everyone on the page is speaking English. It was entertaining to see the established cast of spies, Doyle and Hawker included on a new adventure. As far as I can tell from Bourne's website, her next book is about Justine's little sister, who has seemed very intriguing in previous books.