What I Read This Weekend

What I Read This Weekend . . .

An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer -- Historical Fiction/Romance

This novel is a sweeping history of the Battle of Waterloo with romance secondary to the plot. Lady Worth nee Judith Taverner and her family are in Brussels to celebrate the end of the long fight against Napoleon. Lady Worth hopes her kind brother-in-law Colonel Charles Audley will fall in love with her protogee Miss Lucy Devenish. The minute Charles lays eyes on the dashing widow Lady Barbara Childe he can think of no one else. Lady Barbara is the granddaughter of Dominic from Devil's Club. She has all of his fiery personality and essentially nothing of her grandmother except perhaps stubbornness. The beautiful widow having married once to please her family is determined to never again submit. So she flirts and teases leaving a trail of broken hearts behind. Charles is patient and lets Barbara come to him. The couple finally become engaged but Barbara remains the same. She goes too far and Charles can not like it. A terrible quarrel on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo threatens to destroy Charles if he can survive what is to come. Heyer's forte was historical research and it really shines through in this book. The last 1/3 of the novel consists of a detailed play by play description of the Battle of Waterloo complete with troop movements and every gory death exactly as it occurred. What happens to the characters during the battle is blended in with the real-life events and will keep the reader turning pages until the fictional history is resolved. Lady Barbara is entirely unlikeable in most of the novel. She's the feminine version of her grandfather and instead of shooting people she breaks hearts and causes young men to kill themselves. Lovely. We're told she's spoiled and didn't have a soft feminine influence to curb her wild nature but that doesn't excuse her bad behavior because she's perfectly aware of what she's doing. She has a slow revelation and improves upon acquaintance. We're told Charles is the best brother and he's so good and kind but his characterization is rather passive in this book. He falls in love at first set and lets the lady walk all over him. That doesn't make for a very good romance but by the end of the book I felt for the characters and wanted them to be together. I skimmed most of the battle action. It's very very detailed and extremely gory. I mainly wanted to know what happened to Charles. A minor subplot involving Lucy Devenish is also worked into this history of Waterloo. I liked the fictional parts of the book better than the real life depiction of the battle. I had a hard time keeping track of the real people that figured into the story but remembered the other characters from Regency Buck and Devil's Club so I felt more invested in their story. Different people have different reactions to this book so I won't say if I would recommend it or not but if you read Regency Buck and Devil's Club and want to know what happens next, then I would read the first half of the novel and skim the battle parts. Do not skip the battle parts all together because there are some scenes with fictional characters that are important to the story.