Britain's battle against Napoleon continues, now moving into the 1813 Vitoria campaign in Spain—but this time out Major Richard Sharpe (Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, etc.) is more involved as an undercover agent than as a military leader. The mayhem begins when Major Pierre Ducos, Sharpe's arch-enemy, devises a scheme to win the war and destroy Sharpe in the process. The plot? France would sign a secret treaty with the Spanish king, breaking the Spain/UK alliance. But, to bring this off, Ducos needs help from both Spanish Inquisitor Father Hacha (evil) and Spanish guerrilla-chief El Matarife (a monster)—who require mucho money for their services. So, with an assist from Sharpe's old flame La Marquesa (a.k.a. the Golden Whore), Ducos arranges for her rich husband to challenge super-honorable Sharpe to a duel—resulting in the death of the Marques (his fortune going to Ducos) and murder charges against Sharpe. . . who is promptly convicted and hanged! But: could series-hero Sharpe really be dead? Of course not. Thanks to some last-minute gallows substitution, Sharpe is secretly alive—and, with a teenage Spanish sidekick, he sets off on an undercover-spy mission: find La Marquesa, learn why she helped to flame him, and figure out just what the scheme is all about. Sharpe tangles with the bloodthirsty Matarife; he rescues La Marquesa (half villainess/half heroine) from a convent; he's captured by the French; he struggles to preserve his honour, though sorely tempted otherwise. And finally, as Wellington's men march on Vitoria, Sharpe foils the scheme, chops up El Matarife (who has again abducted La Marquesa), and prepares to march with the triumphant Wellington into France itself. Vile villains, political derring-do d/a Dumas, and dollops of zesty gore: another inventive, active outing for the stalwart (if less than endearing) Major Sharpe.
Pub Date: March 1, 1985
ISBN: 014029435X
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1985
A promising debut that’s awake to emotional, political, and cultural tensions across time and continents.
A novel of sharply drawn character studies immersed in more than 250 hard, transformative years in the African-American diaspora.
Gyasi’s debut novel opens in the mid-1700s in what is now Ghana, as tribal rivalries are exploited by British and Dutch colonists and slave traders. The daughter of one tribal leader marries a British man for financial expediency, then learns that the “castle” he governs is a holding dungeon for slaves. (When she asks what’s held there, she’s told “cargo.”) The narrative soon alternates chapters between the Ghanans and their American descendants up through the present day. On either side of the Atlantic, the tale is often one of racism, degradation, and loss: a slave on an Alabama plantation is whipped “until the blood on the ground is high enough to bathe a baby”; a freedman in Baltimore fears being sent back South with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act; a Ghanan woman is driven mad from the abuse of a missionary and her husband’s injury in a tribal war; a woman in Harlem is increasingly distanced from (and then humiliated by) her husband, who passes as white. Gyasi is a deeply empathetic writer, and each of the novel’s 14 chapters is a savvy character portrait that reveals the impact of racism from multiple perspectives. It lacks the sweep that its premise implies, though: while the characters share a bloodline, and a gold-flecked stone appears throughout the book as a symbolic connector, the novel is more a well-made linked story collection than a complex epic. Yet Gyasi plainly has the talent to pull that off: “I will be my own nation,” one woman tells a British suitor early on, and the author understands both the necessity of that defiance and how hard it is to follow through on it.
A promising debut that’s awake to emotional, political, and cultural tensions across time and continents.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-94713-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility(2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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