9 /10 1 Votes
5/5 Waterstones Language English Pages 504 pp OCLC 64555388 Series The Revolution Quartet Country United Kingdom | 4.1/5 Goodreads Cover artist Tim Byrne Media type Print (Hardback) ISBN 0-7553-2433-1 Originally published 19 June 2006 Followed by The Generals Genre Historical Fiction | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar Simon Scarrow books, The Revolution Quartet books, Historical Fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Young Bloods is the first volume in Simon Scarrow's Revolution quartet, which narrates mostly in alternate chapters, the story of a young Anglo-Irish nobleman Arthur Wellesley and the Corsican cadet Napoleone Buonaparte.
Plot
The book begins with the birth of both men in 1769 - Arthur as a weak and puny baby, a third son, to a wealthy Anglo-Irish Protestant couple; Napoleone as a healthy second son to a Corsican couple fighting the French for independence.
The story continues with the training of both youths as cadet officers, both encountering social and other difficulties thanks to their birth outside the mainland. Arthur's innate conservatism forms as a result of the Gordon riots and his realization that his Anglo-Irish Protestant lifestyle is dependent on maintaining the status quo. Napoleone, on the other hand, is even more of an outsider, a Corsican among Frenchmen, a quasi-noble among pre-revolutionary noblemen, and an impoverished young cadet among those with money to burn. The story ends approximately in 1796, with Arthur having been turned down by the family of his inamorata Kitty Pakenham because of his lack of prospects, and Napoleone, now called Napoleon Bonaparte, mounting a successful attack on Toulon.