The 3rd in the Alain Lausard books finds Bonaparte rising to First Consul and - naturally - Lausard in the thick of it.
Good ol' musket and sword stuff, with enough shooting, maiming and death by cannonball to please even the bloodiest of readers.
That said it's a bit lightweight to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I like this series. Indeed it makes a change from it's British equivalent in Sharpe. The uniforms and tactics are faithfully represented here (unlike the Sharpe books, sorry BC) especially the plethora of Austrian costumery (noting the Hungarian element) and the action moves swiftly along, as always, interspersing scenes between Bonaparte and Lausard.
Lausard's friends and fellow troopers are lightly drawn, and their dialogue starting to get predictable. However, these men are not the brightest soldiers in the world, drawn as they were from the sweeping of the prisons, and I guess you wouldn't expect much more than this.
Remarkably all of Lausard's companions seem to survive the rigours of the second Italian campaign, as they did in Egypt. Perhaps Mr
Howard will thin the ranks as we go through the next in the series. The continuing presence of a goodly number of fellow troopers is beginning to bring on an air of invulnerability. Maybe Mr Howard will kill them all off like Mr Cornwell did in Sharpe's Waterloo.
This would work as a standalone novel, with quite a lot of references to Lausard's past (which is getting a little tiresome) to explain the background, but it really is best to start from the first novel. Therein may lie my biggest disappointment with this book.
You see I started by reading the omnibus edition of the first two novels. Yes, two in one. And thoroughly enjoyed it. I read this book in a couple of days flat and was looking for more. It's very short and as the book neared it's climax (Marengo) I though the author is leaving it all a bit late. Such is the nature of serial book I suppose, but if the next ones are going to be as short as this, then it might be an idea to pair them in omnibus form.
I will hunt down the next one in the series (and no doubt, the one after that) and watch with interest to see if Lausard manges to beat Richard Sharpe into appearing in every major engagement in the Napoleonic Wars !
A book, then, not too taxing, yet containing enough action and historical accuracy to satisfy. Not as sweeping in ambition as Simon Scarrow's outstanding Napoleonic saga or even as involved as Cornwell's Sharpe novels but certainly not as boring as the Hervey books, but nonetheless a good read on a hot sunny Sunday afternoon.