Book Review: George MacDonald Fraser - Flashman

Superb historical fiction, all the more notable for having one of the all-time antiheroes as its protagonist. Fast-paced, well-plotted, bitterly cynical, funny, and full of well-researched historical detail, you almost couldn't ask for a better pulp experience. It was written as the memoirs of Harry Flashman, a spoiled rich kid bully with a great talent for getting out of jams and having his character flaws interpreted as virtues, who's reluctantly forced into the army and spends the rest of the book shirking every responsibility he can en route to completely undeserved glory and fame thanks to the public's need for a hero. He's a total scumbag on basically every page (lazy, cowardly, misogynistic, greedy, lecherous, racist, untrustworthy, etc), and half of the time you're actually pulling for the Plot Armor protecting him to let up and give him what he deserves (in addition to his constant good luck at small things, there's more than one "this is the end, there's no possible way Flashman will get out of this one!" cliffhangers resolved neatly by a timely deus ex machina or fade to black), yet he seems to be the only one capable of understanding the sheer folly of the British experience in the First Anglo-Afghan War, and of imperialism/colonialism more generally.

It's a really neat trick: Flashman's interior monologue is unfailingly unpleasant, but his universal cynicism doesn't spare himself or his fellow British as they arrogantly bumble themselves into a hostile occupation of an unwilling country, pointlessly disrupting its politics and eventually getting over 15,000 soldiers and civilians massacred in the the unmitigated disaster of the 1842 retreat from Kabul. Along the way, Flashman's only principle is to look out for #1, as he advises the reader to do as well, and by the end of this sarcastic demolition of the hero myth, where he's given a visit with the Queen and celebration as a hero, universally lauded by a public ignorant of the real truth, you're forced to admit that he has a point: everyone else in this book is awful too. Don't let the vintage jingoism distract you from a surprisingly fun, insightful, and historically rich adventure story. Better yet, it's the first of a dozen.