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d_audy 's review for:
Napoleon's Spy
by Ben Kane
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is yet another change of setting for Kane, who’s pivoted from the ancient world to the middle-ages with his highly recommended Lionheart trilogy and this time explores the Grande Armée’s disastrous Russian campaign of 1812.
However, despite the very different period and a much shorter and faster paced story, the novel has much of the same charm that made Lionheart and its two sequels so great: a very young rogue-ish protagonist easy to get attached to and sufficiently flawed to be relatable, Matthieu Dupont as he goes for most of the story, who ends up a bit fortuitously (a little too much, but it's fast forgiven) commissioned as a Messenger to one of Napoléon’s advisors (his master of horse) while getting blackmailed into spying on the French; an unpleasant nemesis, some loyal friends, a hint of romance, and a role for the protagonist that places him near enough the heart of things, but still enough on the periphery that Ben Kane can stay very close to historical facts.
He shows us just enough of Napoléon and his advisors from Matthieu’s post near their command tent to understand what is driving them through this often baffling and absurd enterprise but once again with Ben Kane, it’s much less about the biography of great men and narrative of great events than it is about the human experience for the “ordinary” men and women around, and the Russian campaign is certainly an absurd, gruesome and harrowing tale of human madness and terrifying losses of lives that Kane brings to life really well, especially in the part of the novel narrating the horrific retreat from Moscow and Russia which is completely riveting.
Echoing the narratives left by soldiers of the Grande Armée, Kane shows it all through the eyes of Matthieu, to great emotional and dramatic effect. It’s fiction in the service of the truth. As usual with Kane too, the attention to detail teaches you a great deal along the way without ever feeling didactic.
As an aside as a native French speaker, I also appreciate a lot the care Kane puts in his use of the language in the novel, something that was also noteworthy in the Lionheart trilogy. A minor mistake or two can be spotted, but on the whole everything’s accurate, which otherwise can become a huge distraction to any bilingual reader. Kane also shows flair for when to insert foreign dialogue, nouns or titles and clearly understands that “less is more”, using it quite logically in scenes involving both French and non French speakers, but sticking to plain English (with perhaps an occasional French honorific) in scenes involving only French speakers. That may seem common sense, but a lot of writers overdo it and distract with that rather than immerse you.
It may surprise some that Kane chose an “outsider” running messages between commanders rather than a career soldier as narrator for a story set during a military campaign, but it’s one that pays off as not only it makes Matthieu a lot more mobile, it also lets Kane focus more on his experience of things he’s totally unprepared for. This isn’t a story of where cannons where placed and how cavalry was cleverly used. There’s plenty of fiction and non-fiction describing these battles in abundant detail already - Kane with Napoleon’s Spy offers something different. It’s a story of one of the most pointless of military enterprises. It’s a story of hunger, bodies and amputed limbs piling up everywhere, the wounded abandoned to their fate, frost bites and dysentry, of resilience, of self-sacrifice and the will to live another day despite all.
Some might find the ending abrupt, but I personally liked it. I think it's a much more dramatically stronger way to end the story than with an epilogue bringing out of the horror and back to "normal life".
For a while I was to give it 4 stars, but in the end it’s 4.5 as the powerful last act of the book deserves nothing less.
However, despite the very different period and a much shorter and faster paced story, the novel has much of the same charm that made Lionheart and its two sequels so great: a very young rogue-ish protagonist easy to get attached to and sufficiently flawed to be relatable, Matthieu Dupont as he goes for most of the story, who ends up a bit fortuitously (a little too much, but it's fast forgiven) commissioned as a Messenger to one of Napoléon’s advisors (his master of horse) while getting blackmailed into spying on the French; an unpleasant nemesis, some loyal friends, a hint of romance, and a role for the protagonist that places him near enough the heart of things, but still enough on the periphery that Ben Kane can stay very close to historical facts.
He shows us just enough of Napoléon and his advisors from Matthieu’s post near their command tent to understand what is driving them through this often baffling and absurd enterprise but once again with Ben Kane, it’s much less about the biography of great men and narrative of great events than it is about the human experience for the “ordinary” men and women around, and the Russian campaign is certainly an absurd, gruesome and harrowing tale of human madness and terrifying losses of lives that Kane brings to life really well, especially in the part of the novel narrating the horrific retreat from Moscow and Russia which is completely riveting.
Echoing the narratives left by soldiers of the Grande Armée, Kane shows it all through the eyes of Matthieu, to great emotional and dramatic effect. It’s fiction in the service of the truth. As usual with Kane too, the attention to detail teaches you a great deal along the way without ever feeling didactic.
As an aside as a native French speaker, I also appreciate a lot the care Kane puts in his use of the language in the novel, something that was also noteworthy in the Lionheart trilogy. A minor mistake or two can be spotted, but on the whole everything’s accurate, which otherwise can become a huge distraction to any bilingual reader. Kane also shows flair for when to insert foreign dialogue, nouns or titles and clearly understands that “less is more”, using it quite logically in scenes involving both French and non French speakers, but sticking to plain English (with perhaps an occasional French honorific) in scenes involving only French speakers. That may seem common sense, but a lot of writers overdo it and distract with that rather than immerse you.
It may surprise some that Kane chose an “outsider” running messages between commanders rather than a career soldier as narrator for a story set during a military campaign, but it’s one that pays off as not only it makes Matthieu a lot more mobile, it also lets Kane focus more on his experience of things he’s totally unprepared for. This isn’t a story of where cannons where placed and how cavalry was cleverly used. There’s plenty of fiction and non-fiction describing these battles in abundant detail already - Kane with Napoleon’s Spy offers something different. It’s a story of one of the most pointless of military enterprises. It’s a story of hunger, bodies and amputed limbs piling up everywhere, the wounded abandoned to their fate, frost bites and dysentry, of resilience, of self-sacrifice and the will to live another day despite all.
Some might find the ending abrupt, but I personally liked it. I think it's a much more dramatically stronger way to end the story than with an epilogue bringing out of the horror and back to "normal life".
For a while I was to give it 4 stars, but in the end it’s 4.5 as the powerful last act of the book deserves nothing less.