Flashman and the Angel of the Lord

UPDATE ON HARPER'S FERRY (ORIGINAL REVIEW BELOW): Like most folks (I'm pretty sure), while I had some previous - if limited - knowledge of John Brown and his raid on Harper's Ferry, I had never heard of the Kennedy Farm (aka "John Brown's HQS," above) prior to reading this book and watching the excel......more

In this installment Harry Flashman winds up entangled in abolotionist John Brown's disastrous but seminal Harpers Ferry raid, an event which almost singlehandedly plunged the United States into the Civil War. I've studied John Brown and the Harpers Ferry raid pretty extensively for other projects, a......more

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord sees George Macdonald Fraser's Victorian anti-hero ensnarled in his most improbable adventure yet: at the side of John Brown during his Harper's Ferry Raid in 1859. Flashman runs into an old enemy, Oxford don-turned-slave trader John Charity Spring (of Flash for Fr......more

I enjoyed this book, but less than probably any other Flashman I've read. I felt that Fraser was passionately interested - or at least became so - in John Brown while writing this novel, and the parts where he tries to make a portrait of the man are powerful and well-done. It's just the rest of the......more

Arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in 1858, poor Flashy is once again shanghaied by his old enemy John Charity Spring (who used his wanton, willful daughter as bait). Flashman is sent unwillingly to Maryland, where is forced to once more take on the disguise of Beauchamp Comber, British Navy officer......more