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Flashman and the Mountain of Light (The Flashman Papers, #9)

George MacDonald Fraser

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Jun 13, 2010 Kay rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fict, victoriana, fiction, ripping_yarns, faux-memoir, british-history-civ, india

A ripping yarn. Sped through it in two days, licked my chops, and wanted to reach for the next episode. This is the third in the series I've read, and once again I'm in awe of the depth of GMF's scholarship and ability to insert Flashy plausibly into the most implausible circumstances. I'd read some other accounts peripheral to this book, most notably The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan by Ben Mcintyre, but otherwise remained more or less blissfully ignorant of the main A ripping yarn. Sped through it in two days, licked my chops, and wanted to reach for the next episode. This is the third in the series I've read, and once again I'm in awe of the depth of GMF's scholarship and ability to insert Flashy plausibly into the most implausible circumstances. I'd read some other accounts peripheral to this book, most notably The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan by Ben Mcintyre, but otherwise remained more or less blissfully ignorant of the main event in question, the first Anglo-Sikh War of 1845-46. Ever wonder how that admirable warrior race, the Sikhs, came to be among the British Raj's most faithful troops? Well, this volume went a long ways towards explaining it.

Along the way are GMF's usual cast of incredibly colorful -- and even more impressively, historical - characters, including a power-hungry nymphomaniac rani (Jind Kaur, whom Flashman calls "Jeendan"), not one but two American adventurers (Josiah Harlan and Alexander Gardner), and the sort of warts-and-all portraits of the British command (Hugh Gough, Henry Hardinge, et al.) we've come to expect of GMF.

The footnotes are an amateur historians delight, and it's just about all I can do not to hare off to find copies of such promising references as Lady Sale's Journal of the Disasters in Affghanistan, for one. And where did GMF come up with such a command of the native terms of abuse and odd bits of market palaver? Hobson-Jobson? Mined from contemporary accounts? Whatever the case, it was delightful.

One note of disappointment (nothing to do with the book per se, mind you): I had wanted to link to a romping good website I'd once found devoted to Flashman, which included with plot synopses and reams of Flashman trivia, but all that seems to remain these days is the Wikipedia entry --- most others have been shut down or disappeared, presumably under legal duress rather than for lack of stamina. It's a pity, as some of them were quite entertaining.

Ah, well; there are always the books. And that's what counts, ain't it? ...more

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Jun 14, 2009 Isabel added it

Dec 14, 2009 Abe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, humor, historical-fiction

Jan 26, 2013 Barondestructo rated it liked it

Dec 26, 2015 Oblomov rated it really liked it

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