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The Battle by: Patrick Rambaud

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Publisher: Picador
Release date: 9th March, 2001
Media: Paperback

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Average rating -

Rating: - Dull, dull, dull

This is a very very dull novel.

I am very keen reader of most genres but my favourites are history and historic fiction, in particular because of the great Sharpe and Hornblower novels I am drawn to the Napoleonic wars. I had huge hopes on discovering this one of finding another great novel however I was hugely disappointed and like the other reviewers cant understand how this novel won any awards.

Perhaps the English translation is at fault, and with it loses some of the pace and depth? But despite the book mainly following a bloody battle I was so bored and book just dragged on. Again, as one of the other reviewers pointed out Bernard Cornwell can tell a story and grips you, this one put me to sleep.

To any other Sharpe fans out there perhaps skim read it for an education about how a book shouldnt be written.

Go read the Sharpe series again or Simon Scarrows trilogy on Napoleon and Wellington both superior to this effort.

Rating: - Also disappointed

After reading some of the other reviews on here I feel like buying this book again to read in case I missed something - I was hugely disappointed. The Napoleonic Wars are an interest of mine and some of my favourite books are novels recreating what it must have been like, such as the excellent "Killer Angels" does for Gettysburg. This one totally failed to grip me - if you are undeterred by my warning I would seriously consider only paying the Used & New price.

Rating: - One of the best war books ever

This is one of the best war books ever written; you will personally live this battle again trough the heroic live of Massena and Lasalle. After this reading you will look for the next Rambaud's book's and search all informations about Napoleon's Marshall's.

Rating: - very disappointing

I fail to understand how this title won an award. At first it seemed to offer something different, in that it employs the 1809 Battle of Aspern-Essling as an historical background. The text should have been interesting, considering that the battle itself was one of Napoleon's few defeats and it may not have been used in an historical novel before. However, it sadly fails on all accounts. It is the most boring novel I've ever attempted to read. It is totally unengaging and half way through I didn't really care what would happen next and saw no reason to continue wasting time reading it. In Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels, the reader knows that a French column will attack the British formed in line and that the hero will save the day. But Cornwall can tell a good story and can keep the reader interested. Rambaud, judging by this title, can't.

Rating: - A novel for the history majors.

This confusion of fact and fiction in this book is both its strength and its weakness. Lovers of history admire the book for the author's careful depiction of the battle itself, the details that make the action vivid, bloody, and unrelenting, and his ability to create plausible historical figures. As a novel, however, The Battle lacks the feeling and sense of humanity one finds in great battle fiction, its claim to being a novel resting primarily in the fact that the author recreates not only the battle, but the (invented) conversations and thoughts of the participants. Although Rambaud does this effectively, the book remains "thin," largely lacking the unique, personal details which contribute to the development of real, breathing humans with whom the reader can identify and who make "novels" come alive.

Although the author does include a minor love interest and glimpses of the author who later calls himself Stendahl, the "biggest" character for me was Vincent Paradis, a young private whose opinions, observations, and movement among camps provide the author with a vehicle for organizing this immense amount of material. The book seems almost totally driven by the real movement of the real battle, and it feels like a good history book. Napoleon never comes across as a real human facing human crises. Mary Whipple

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