Review: An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer

Posted October 17, 2007 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Reviews | 1 Comment

Review: An Infamous Army by Georgette HeyerReviewer: Rowena
An Infamous Army (Alastair-Audley #4) by Georgette Heyer
Series: Alastair-Audley #4
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Sourcebooks Landmark
Publication Date: September 1st 2007
Genres: Historical Romance
Pages: 512
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
four-half-stars
Series Rating: five-stars

IN THE SUMMER OF 1815, with Napoleon Bonaparte marching down from the north, Brussels is a whirlwind of parties, balls and soirees.

In the swirling social scene surrounding the Duke of Wellington and his noble aides de camp, no one attracts more attention than the beautiful, outrageous young widow Lady Barbara Childe.

On their first meeting, dashing Colonel Charles Audley proposes to her, but even their betrothal doesn't calm her wild behavior.

Finally, with the Battle of Waterloo raging just miles away, civilians fleeing and the wounded pouring back into the town, Lady Barbara discovers where her heart really lies, and like a true noblewoman, she rises to the occasion, and to the demands of love, life and war...

I’d like to send a quick thank you to Sourcebook Publishing for sending us a copy of this book to be reviewed, I’ve been swamped with work so I didn’t have time to publish this review until right now but, wow…what can I say about this book?

I’ve never read a historical romance novel quite like this one. First of all, the dialogue in the story had my eyes hurting when I first started the book because it starts off at some party and their language was just so not something I’m familiar with in historicals but instead of turning me off the story, it made me want to read more…I actually felt like I was in the ballroom with Lady Worth, listening to everything going on around me. I could actually picture everything so vividly in my head because the words GH used to describe everything was just out of this world great.

It was easy to fall into this story because the writing was great. I was on Chapter 8 before I even noticed that I’d been reading for almost 3 hours one night, it was that smooth a read. I’ve got to admit though that when I first met Lady Babs I was not a fan of hers, I wanted Colonel Charles Audley to fall madly in love with the Devenish girl and when they had that little moment at the ball when Charles first comes back, I was hopeful even though I knew that Charles was going to end up with Lady Babs.

But over the course of the book, Lady Babs started getting a little better in my eyes even though she drove me batty at times where Charles was concerned, I mean the way she carried on and stuff, without a care in the world, causing the gossipmongers to flag their tongues drove me absolutely insane but when and where it counted, she came through and she won me over by the end of the book, she was a great heroine, a strong and solid one. I mean, I knew that there was goodness in her because she’s the heroine and I knew it was going to come out sooner or later but the things she did made me grit my teeth sometimes, I mean the whole almost breaking up the marriage of the close friend of the Worth’s, I was like, WHAT ARE YOU DOING???? But, alls well that ends well, because she drove me crazy but I never hated her throughout the book, she just made me sigh a lot. But man, this woman is crazy wicked strong, seeing her help those wounded men, if this were a movie I probably would have stood and applauded her, I liked her because of it.

As far as Charles is concerned, I loved him. I hella loved him even when I was shouting at the rooftops for him not to fall in love with Babs, I loved him. He was a good strong gentleman and I just loved him from the very first…I’m not much of a fan of the style of dress these guys used to wear but man Charles Audley was a sexy stud to me, just because of …HIM. LOVED HIM! I loved seeing him with his friends, I loved seeing him with his family and I loved seeing him battle wits with Lady Babs, I just loved HIM dangit!

Now before I started reading this book, I didn’t know a lick about the Battle at Waterloo…having read this book, I could probably teach a class on it…haha, just kidding, but that’s how great the details were in this book. I could feel the tensions rising, the hearts thumping, the panic trying to storm through the closer Napoleon got and everything was just seemed so real. The description with which she uses to describe the war itself and the soldiers and the deaths and everything was fantastic, there’s one death scene in here that gutted me but man, I hecka loved all of it.

I really enjoyed this book and I really enjoyed the characters, the story and I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed history as much as I have while reading this book, reading this book reminded me of when I first started watching The Tudors, how I had to rush off to Google and google the battle of Waterloo just to read up on the whole thing because this book, even though it was gory, was so compelling and just out and out really good.

A definite must to read, I hella enjoyed this book and am truly grateful that I was given a chance to read this book because I probably wouldn’t have picked this book up on my own, so thanks Sourcebook Publishing for sending me this gem of a book, it’s a definite winner.

Grade: 4.5 out of 5

four-half-stars


Tagged: , , , , , ,

One response to “Review: An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.