good addition to the Waterloo period
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Very well written. Very well researched. i'm not too keen on his writing style, but i was hooked and have re-read this a number of times. Good book.
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Surprisingly good
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To be honest, I was not at all sure this was going to be my type of book, as I am not generally particularly keen on military history / war novels, but I really found this to be a (surprisingly) good and engaging read - even for a non-military history buff. The characters were interesting and generally well portrayed. Even though I knew the basic outcome, the book was compelling and I felt I could really appreciate the author's fascination with the subject.
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One for the read again pile.
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Well done Iain Gale. A story and history interwoven, delivered with galloping pace; guts, gore and glory. The battle of Waterloo. Sorry about that mes amis, complusory reading for les rostbifs.
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Four Days in June
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The Battle of Waterloo explained, I have read many books on the battle & this one gives an overview from both sides, easy reading & enthralling, A great read.
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Nice book, lousy maps
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'Four days in June' tells of the battle(s) taking place between June 15th 1815 and June 18th 1815 (the day of the actual battle of Waterloo), as experienced by a number people on both sides:
- General von Ziethen (1st Corps of the Prussian army under Blücher)
- Sir William Howe de Lancey (Wellington's Quartermaster General)
- Marshal Ney of the French army
- Lieutenant-Colonel James MacDonnel (Guards)
- the Emperor Napoleon himself
Telling 'how it was' without actually having been there is off course always a matter of interpretation but Gale claims to have based himself on a huge number of written accounts of participants and eye-witnesses, and anyway, as he states himself in his afterword: 'This book is a novel'. And judging it as a novel, it's really quite good.
The fact that all characters are officers is surely no coincidence. Even to them the battle at times must have seemed a hopelessly confused mess of random acts, but one can suppose they did have a better overview than the privates, which makes their testimonials credible and allows Gale to describe the movements and manoeuvres of both armies. And he does so in an engaging style, with vivid descriptions of both small-scale battle scenes and the view 'from behind the lines' on a broader scale.
There's also five maps in the book, and these are a disappointment (in a way it's even a bit weird to have a novel come with no less than 5 maps but I suppose it makes sense here). Since they are in the book you obviously try to locate what you're reading about, only to find that many of the place names or positions of military units are simply not there. So you can either try to ignore the maps in the book, or constantly have another book by your side that does have detailed maps. Neither makes for easy reading which is why I've given 3 stars instead of 4.
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