#The Story Of Young Napoleon's Campaign For Egypt I Napoleon: Egyptian Campaign

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This Napoleon was pretty cute

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MALMAISON MEDIA SALON SOIRÉE 14: AT ABOUKIR AND ACRE (1898)

1. The Introduction

Hello, Dear Neighbors, and welcome back to Malmaison Media Salon. So, as I’ve said before, today we’re going to talk about a book by G. A. Henty, one of my archenemies!

Why archenemy?

That’s just how I label authors whose shit I reviewed before. Henty’s “wonderful” book about Frev left a bad taste in my mouth for a long time, so I was understandably mistrustful of any other piece of his.

However, after finding out he has one more Frev book AND several Napoleonic ones and this one (About the Egyptian Campaign, between the two eras), I had to make another review in spite of my lower than six feet expectations. So I went on Project Gutenberg to download the ebook for free. That’s where you can get it by the way.

But hey, maybe this book is better than the one I reviewed before. It’s always a possibility, right? The short answer is no. The long answer is not at all.

For an even longer answer, let us finally proceed with the review, which I dedicate to @koda-friedrich , @blackwidowmarshal123 and @aminoscribbles .

2. The Summary

As you might guess from the title, the book is set during the Egyptian campaign and, in classic Henty fashion, has a young English boy as the protagonist.

Edgar Blagrove, the boy in question, is a son of an English merchant who is left behind in Egypt during the war, so the book follows his adventures as he’s trying to survive, reunite with his family and have adventures along the way (as you do).

Even though Henty’s books are targeted at young boys, the premise sounds like something that I would actually enjoy, but I didn’t.

Let’s dissect this book to find out just how bad it gets, shall we?

3. The Story

The beginning isn’t so great. At first the opening scene promises some action, yet the immersion is broken like glass a couple of pages in with heaps upon heaps of Edgar’s backstory. Nice job, Henty…

Luckily, it’s the only time an extensive flashback like this is used, but the pacing can get about as fast as snail because often pieces of information get repeated in dialogues when nothing bad would’ve happened if the author avoided said repetition.

Moreover, while in the first half or so of the story the hero’s ways of getting out of problems stay realistic and justifiable, the second half has Edgar cross so far into Mary Sue territory that he may as well be called Gary Stu.

(Spoilers ahead)

This kid gets hired by SIDNEY FUCKING SMITH as a midshipman and interpreter. I’m not kidding, that’s an actual plot point!

Let me repeat: A kid who DID NOT previously serve in the navy is made midshipman and interpreter by SIDNEY SMITH, who meets said kid by pure coincidence! And only the interpreter part is justified, since Edgar was educated in several languages from a young age and learned the mother tongues of servants and citizens of Cairo too.

That, in all honesty, was the point where I just lost what little investment I had because it just became too apparent that everything will be fine and Edgar will have a happy ending.

4. The Characters

Before crossing the Gary Stu threshold, Edgar actually had potential to be a good character.

He is a reckless kid who was so bored with his monotonous life in Cairo that he wanted to see the English kick the French in the ass.

He cares about his friends, is kind and ready to help his loved ones and sometimes makes risky decisions.

But then he just becomes somebody who is always right and he gets too perfect. So all the potential goes down the drain like a dead goldfish. Hooray…

Sidi, an Arab boy Edgar rescues in the beginning of the story, is a bit more interesting, mainly due to his dynamic with Edgar as basically adopted brothers. He and his family provide Edgar with shelter in their oasis and help him out in a time of need too. Unfortunately, Sidi is a bit of a flat character for someone who gets a pretty major role in the story, but Henty isn’t too good with characters anyway.

Other characters are flat too. To various degrees. Unfortunately, that’s all I can say because there’s a ton of characters.

However, English officers like Nelson and Sidney Smith are whitewashed and glorified to no end. Henty loves sucking the dick of English nationalism, but I already saw that in my other review so no surprise there.

As for the French side of things… I was genuinely surprised that Napoleon was NOT portrayed as Devil Incarnate and it’s mentioned that he does care about his troops.

Many historical figures are name dropped but don’t appear in person, such as Kleber, Desaix, Junot, Menou, etc. Personally, I’m glad they don’t get a cameo in person for several reasons:

A) the book isn’t about them

B) it would be too unrealistic for Edgar to meet those people

C) after the atrocious portrayal of Montagnards, I DO NOT trust Henty with accuracy when it comes to French Republican generals

Eugene de Beauharnais is omitted once again, even though I’m pretty sure he participated in that campaign. Oh well, shout-out to Eugene from me!

5. The Setting

Henty is, once again, bad with settings and his descriptions are, at times, too minimalistic.

I didn’t feel the action in battle scenes, I couldn’t envision the oasis, the streets of Cairo or any other settings. There’s just not enough to achieve immersion.

6. The Writing

The writing is old fashioned, as it was a book written in the 19th century, but for people who are fluent in English there shouldn’t be a lot of issues with comprehending the vocabulary, except maybe all the naval terms that have no definitions given. Grrr…

I can’t necessarily call Henty’s writing awful, but it’s not for me so it didn’t help my overall impression of the book.

7. The Conclusion

Even though it’s not as bad as “In the Reign of Terror” was, it’s still not a book I would recommend and the improvements are insignificant.

Most characters are still flat, the annoying nationalism has still reared its head, the pacing is longer than the Amazon River and the protagonist becomes a Gary Stu in the end.

The verdict? Please find something else to read.

Anyway, the soirée is officially coming to an end. Please stay tuned because more updates are coming soon.

Love,

Citizen Green Pixel

[josefavomjaaga]

(Painting - Antoine Gros: Eugène Beauharnais, aged 15) And yet another Egyptian tale from Eugène de Beauharnais’ memoir fragments. This time, it’s a real harem story. It takes place shortly after the French had won the »Battle of the Pyramids« and occupied Cairo. Mourad-Bey, one of the two Mameluk leaders, had fled the city, but his harem, apparently consisting of several dozends of women, had remained behind, like most families of the Mameluks. As Eugène puts it:

»Quelques jours après notre arrivée au Caire, je fus envoyé chez la femme de Mourad-Bey, que ce chef de mamelukes y avait laissée avec tout son sérail. Voici à quelle occasion. Des officiers français, et entre autres le chef d’escadron Rapp, avaient reçu des coups de poignard dans les rues du Caire; les assaillants avaient échappé à nos pursuites, en sorte qu’on pouvait craindre qu’il n’y eût des mamelukes cachés dans cette ville. Dans cette supposition, la maison de Mourad-Bey devait paraître plus suspecte que toute autre. En conséquence, je me rendis chez sa femme, par ordre du général en chef, pour l’assurer que sa maison et ses biens seraient respectés, et qu’elle pourrait compter sur la protection des français, pourvu qu’elle s’abstint de toute communication avec l’ennemi et qu’elle promit de ne donner aucun asile aux malintentionnés. Madame Mourad-Bey me reçut avec la plus grande distinction et me servit elle-même le café. On a imprimé quelque part qu’elle me fit cadeau d’un diamant d’une grande valeur, mais c’est une erreur. Elle protesta de son exactitude à remplir les conditions qu’on exigeait d’elle, et, pour me convaincre que sa maison ne recélait aucune personne suspecte, elle voulut absolument que je la parcourusse avec elle. Nous traversâmes, au rez-de-chaussée, de vastes pièces où se trouvaient empilés une grande quantité de coussins et de carreaux de toute espèce, et je dois avouer franchement que je n’étais pas sans une sorte d’inquiétude, craignant de voir sortir à l’improviste de dessous ces coussins quelqu’un de ces mameluks habiles dans l’art de couper les têtes.

Le premier étage était occupé par les femmes composant le harem de Mourad-Bey; elles y étaient distribuées comme par chambrée. C’est là qu’une scène grotesque et fort embarrassante m’attendait. A l’aspect d’un être aussi nouveau que je l’étais pour la plupart de ces femmes, elles manifestent la curiosité la plus importune; elles m’entourent, me pressent, veulent toucher et défaire mes vêtements, et poussent leurs attouchements jusqu’au dernier degré d’indécence. En vain Madame Mourad-Bey leur ordonne de se rétirer; en vain je les repousse moi-même assez rudement; il fallut appeler les eunuques, qui, accourant à la voix de leur maîtresse, frappent à coups redoublés de nerf de boeuf sur ces forcenées et les obligent enfin à lâcher prise.«

***

A couple of days after our arrival in Cairo, I was sent to the wife of Murad-Bey, left here by this chief of the Mamluks with all his seraglio. This is why I was sent. French officers, and among others the squadron leader Rapp, had been stabbed in the streets of Cairo; the assailants had escaped our pursuits, so that it was to be feared that there were Mamelukes hidden in this city. On this supposition, the house of Murad-Bey must have seemed more suspicious than any other. Consequently, I went to his wife's house, by order of the General-in-Chief, to assure her that her household and property would be respected, and that she could count on the protection of the French, provided that she abstained from all communication with the enemy and promised not to give any shelter to the ill-intentioned. Madame Mourad-Bey received me with the greatest distinction and herself served me coffee. It has been printed somewhere that she presented me with a diamond of great value, but this is a mistake. She protested that she had fulfilled the conditions required of her, and to convince me that there were no suspicious persons in her house, she insisted that I should go through it with her. On the ground floor we passed through spacious rooms, where there were piles of cushions and tiles of all kinds, and I have to confess frankly that I was not without a sort of anxiety, fearing that from beneath these cushions one of those Mamelukes skilled in the art of cutting off heads might suddenly emerge.

The first floor was occupied by the women who made up the harem of Murad-Bey; they were distributed there as if by room. It was there that a grotesque and highly embarrassing scene awaited me. At the appearance of a being as new as I was to most of these women, they manifested the most importunate curiosity; they surrounded me, pressed me, wanted to touch and undo my clothes, and pushed their touching to the last degree of indecency. In vain Madame Mourad-Bey ordered them to withdraw; in vain I myself repulsed them rather roughly; the eunuchs had to be called, who, running to the voice of their mistress, struck these madwomen with repeated blows of pizzles and finally forced them to let go. (DuCasse, Mémoires et Correspondance politique et militaire du Prince Eugène, tome 1)

On first reading this, I was utterly convinced Eugène had made that part up. Just to spice up his memoirs – after all, what’s a story about Egypt without at least a little harem story, right? But since then I have learned that Napoleon himself, writing about the Egyptian campaign on Saint Helena, mentioned that he had sent Eugène to Mourad-Bey’s wife, adding:

He sent to her Capitaine Beauharnais [sic; in truth Eugène was seventeen at the time and only a sub-lieutenant], his stepson, to convey his greetings and to give her a firman [document] guaranteeing her the possession of all her villages. She was very rich [...] and the harem over which she ruled consisted of fifty women from all countries and of all colours. The officers of the palace had a lot of trouble keeping them back; all the slaves wanted to see the young and handsome Frenchman.

I assume he was still grinning inwardly at the memory of his 17-year-old stepson, somewhat disconcerted and dishevelled, reporting back to headquarters that day…

And I love the idea of Eugène nervously checking every room for hidden assassins, only to be assaulted in a very different way.

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Why we love (and fear) mummies

http://bit.ly/2wDCvnR

The Mummy, in its 2017 rendition, rehashes an 80-year-old franchise focused on revived Egyptian corpses. AlloCine

Somewhere in Iraq, the tomb raider Nick Morton (a never-ageing Tom Cruise) flies over the desert. This is where Egyptian queen Ahmanet lies in her tomb for eternity. Or so we thought.

The plot of Alex Kurtzman’s latest Hollywood blockbuster, The Mummy, which cost US$125 million to make and was released on June 14, brings back a classic cinematographic and literary theme: mummies unleashed.

In Kurtzman’s film, the desiccated queen, played by French-Algerian actress Sofia Boutella, is exotic, sensual and, in turn, monstrous. Enraged at her unearthing, she chases Morton and his cohort to the other side of the world with a millennium’s worth of pent-up resentment.

Trailer for The Mummy, 2017.

Kurtzman’s flick revives a long-standing franchise dating back to the 1930s, this time with the novel twist of a woman playing the role of desiccated protagonist. Generally telling tales of forbidden love, terrible curses, eroticism and death, mummy flicks have entertained generations of spectators.

Why this fascination for Egyptian corpses?

Enter Egyptomania

It all started in the 19th century.

In 1822, the French scholar Jean-François Champollion, who’d been awed by Egypt since Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 military campaign there, cracked the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the whole world became fascinated with this ancient north African civilisation.

Ramses II, photographed in 1889. Wikimedia

A few decades later, the Romance of the Mummy, by French novelist Théophile Gautier, associated for the first time eroticism and death in the form of the mummy.

The 1857 book, in which archaeologists discover the body of Queen Tahoser (inspired by a real queen from the 12th century BC) – a magnificent young woman who also happens to be perfectly preserved – became an instant bestseller.

By the 1880s, European archaeologists had discovered the mummies of pharaohs Ramses II, Ahmose and Thutmose III and their research had a huge following in Europe and North America, nourishing the West’s growing Egyptomania.

The public was particularly fascinated by the sophisticated techniques used to preserve the ancient bodies. When the 3,000-year-old mummy of Pharaoh Seti I was discovered in 1881, it looked like he’d only just fallen asleep.

Tutankhamun has inspired many legends and cursed more than a few on-screen archaeologists. Sriom/Pixabay

In 1892, best-selling author Sir Conan Doyle published Lot No. 249, in which a mummy bought at auction is revived by an Oxford student who then uses the creature as a weapon. This theme would go on to inspire horror films into the 20th century.

Egyptomania reached its peak with the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, in 1922, in the Valley of the Kings. When Lord Carnarvon, the wealthy British amateur Egyptologist who had funded the excavation of the tomb, died the following year, the Western press was quick to spread the rumour of a fatal curse that would kill all European archaeologists associated with the expedition.

Meet with the kings at the Mummy Room in Cairo Museum in Egypt. TravellerGroup

Thus a legend was born.

Mummy fever

Films clearly engender and play on a fear of mummies and their ancient curses. But mummies also fascinate us, making us feel we can vanquish time by preserving the most perishable part of our bodies: the flesh.

Ancient Egyptians developed the art of embalming cadavers to ensure eternal life, emptying the body of its viscera, removing the brain via the nostrils using bronze hooks, and placing the body in a bath of natron, a sodium carbonate mix, for approximately 40 days, which desiccated it completely.

Only the heart, necessary for the deceased to be resurrected in the afterlife, was kept in its place. Is it any surprise, then, that other leaders with dreams of reigning eternal should want their bodies to be embalmed, too?

When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, his mummy was placed in a mausoleum at the centre of Alexandria, the city he founded, and worshipped. Luminaries such as Julius Caesar and Augustus visited to his tomb.

The communist era also saw its share of mummifications too. Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao were both embalmed, and Lenin’s mummy, on display in Moscow’s Red Square, is considered a sacred relic. A team of scientists maintains and retouches it so frequently that the 147-year-old leader actually seems to be getting younger.

Lenin’s mummy, which has been kept in Red Square since 1924, is ‘freshened up’.

When cinema takes over

All of this has proven irresistible for filmmakers.

Unfortunately, the last copy of an 1899 French mummy film, Cleopatra’s Tomb, directed by Georges Méliès, disappeared in the 1930s.

In 1932, Universal Pictures made the first major mummy film in cinematic history. Directed by Karl Freund, The Mummy features the inimitable Boris Karloff, who had played Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein the year before. As the undead Im-Ho-Tep, Karloff’s make-up was inspired by the head of Pharaoh Seti I.

Boris Karloff, 1932 in The Mummy. Wikimedia

Head of pharaoh Seti I’s mummy, Cairo Museum. Wikimedia

Universal would go on to produce another five mummy films between 1940 and 1955, including the slapstick Abbott and Costello meet the Mummy.

In 1999, the studio produced a remake of their 1932 blockbuster, The Mummy, directed by Stephen Sommers, and released its sequel The Mummy Returns in 2001. Both were major hits.

This, despite the fact that the plots rarely diverge from the obvious: illicit love between an Egyptian queen and a layman; an embalmed victim buried alive in a tomb for eternity, sometimes with beetles inside; a long awaited revenge.

These horror films are often not B but Z movies, and apart for a few exceptions – Kurtzman’s latest attempt not among them – they generally receive bad press. Still, audience interest in macabre fantasies and thrillingly dark stories has not faded.

Egyptomania remains very much alive on the big screen.

Christian-Georges Schwentzel is the author of Cléopâtre, la déesse reine ( Payot).

Christian-Georges Schwentzel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

[oneguywithaniphone]

July 19, 1799: Rosetta Stone found

On this day in 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria. The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests honoring the king of Egypt, Ptolemy V, in the second century B.C. More startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000 years.

When Napoleon, an emperor known for his enlightened view of education, art and culture, invaded Egypt in 1798, he took along a group of scholars and told them to seize all important cultural artifacts for France. Pierre Bouchard, one of Napoleon’s soldiers, was aware of this order when he found the basalt stone, which was almost four feet long and two-and-a-half feet wide, at a fort near Rosetta. When the British defeated Napoleon in 1801, they took possession of the Rosetta Stone.

Several scholars, including Englishman Thomas Young made progress with the initial hieroglyphics analysis of the Rosetta Stone. French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832), who had taught himself ancient languages, ultimately cracked the code and deciphered the hieroglyphics using his knowledge of Greek as a guide. Hieroglyphics used pictures to represent objects, sounds and groups of sounds. Once the Rosetta Stone inscriptions were translated, the language and culture of ancient Egypt was suddenly open to scientists as never before.

The Rosetta Stone has been housed at the British Museum in London since 1802, except for a brief period during World War I. At that time, museum officials moved it to a separate underground location, along with other irreplaceable items from the museum’s collection, to protect it from the threat of bombs.

from History.com - This Day in History - Lead Story http://ift.tt/OIfq2B

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JACOBIN FICTION CONVENTION MEETING 29: NAPOLEON’S PYRAMIDS (2007)

1. The introduction

Well, hello again, dear Citizens! Welcome back to Jacobin Fiction Convention because it is now back in session!

Okay, first I will get one thing out of the way. I’m doing much better than I did in summer, hence the decision to resume my reviews. And what better way to make a comeback than to get the promised things out of the way first?!

On that note, I introduce to you the topic of today’s meeting: “Napoleon’s Pyramids”, a novel in the adventure genre set in the Egyptian campaign. Now, Directory years don’t have a good reputation in the Frev community, but technically those years are still officially Frev, hence my decision to include this book in the Jacobin Fiction Convention category.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure some people in my audience already know it, but I LOVE adventure stories, so when I stumbled across this book on a quest to find more Frev/Napoleonic media to review, you can bet your ass that I got excited!

Also, its resemblance to an Indiana Jones story initially drew me in, as I used to like the first Indiana Jones movie as a kid (not so much now) so there is some nostalgia involved here as well.

Luckily for me, I managed to find the book in pdf format here:

Then I did more research and it’s available in Russian too, mainly online and sometimes in paperback form, so my fellow Russian speakers who aren’t good at English can find the Russian version!

Is it worth looking for though? Well, let’s find out.

This review is dedicated to @mamelukeraza .

2. The Summary

Here’s the summary from Amazon and, apparently, the back cover of the book:

What mystical secrets lie beneath the Great Pyramids?

The world changes for Ethan Gage—one-time assistant to the renowned Ben Franklin—on a night in post-revolutionary Paris, when he wins a mysterious medallion in a card game. Framed soon after for the murder of a prostitute and facing the grim prospect of either prison or death, the young expatriate American barely escapes France with his life—choosing instead to accompany the new emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, on his glorious mission to conquer Egypt. With Lord Nelson's fleet following close behind, Gage sets out on the adventure of a lifetime. And in a land of ancient wonder and mystery, with the help of a beautiful Macedonian slave, he will come to realize that the unusual prize he won at the gaming table may be the key to solving one of history's greatest and most perilous riddles: who built the Great Pyramids . . . and why?

By all accounts, this book should have been right up my alley! I mean, we have adventures, ancient artifacts, mysteries and clues! What could possibly go wrong?!

(Spoiler alert: A LOT. More on that later.)

3. The Story

First of all, I didn’t really like the beginning of the book, mostly because the narrator (Ethan Gage) really takes his precious ass time to dive into his backstory and explain how he ended up at a table playing that fateful card game. I’m talking about two pages of backstory before finally getting to the fucking point!

Don’t get me wrong, a proper introduction is important to me personally, but maybe my problem is the fact that I prefer to receive a character’s backstory over time, bit by bit. Otherwise it gets a bit too distracting for me, especially when Gage stops narrating to crank out a few pages of his damn autobiography before returning to the actual events at hand.

Also, unfortunately for this book, the comparisons to Indiana Jones don’t imply anything good here. It simply reads like an extremely predictable adventure story that desperately tries and fails to be engaging and fun while treating really old orientalist tropes like a checklist (mysterious Egypt, hot slave girls…). Even the cliffhanger ending is predictable as shit.

Moreover, there is almost no suspense. Gage either conveniently shoots his target or gets conveniently rescued all the time. In short, he always wins, which is not what should happen in a good story because most people get bored with heroes who always win.

Last but not least, too many coincidences and everyone being connected to the point where my suspension of disbelief just went right out the window.

At one point Ethan Gage randomly encounters Sidney Smith, for example. Also he gets rescued by Nelson after a naval battle. And in a later chapter it turns out that the Romani with whom Gage had to hide at one point were the ones who alerted Gage’s future allies in Egypt about his arrival. Very fucking believable.

At this point, this book may as well be a soap opera where all the heroes are somehow connected!

Speaking of heroes…

4. The Characters

I don’t like Ethan Gage. He’s basically a knockoff Indiana Jones crossbred with a Mary Sue. Perfect sharpshooter, womanizer, spy, adventurer, apprentice of Benjamin Franklin. He has a lot of skills and connections and not enough justification for having them.

Trust me, even the fact that he’s a Freemason wasn’t enough for me to justify the fact that he just HAPPENS to know a bunch of important people.

Other than that, he starts out as a typical lone adventurer with no family who enjoys gambling and the company of sex workers. I was half expecting him to go full James Bond and be an alcoholic too, but luckily it wasn’t that cliché.

The Macedonian slave mentioned in the summary, Astiza, is a slightly more interesting character, even though she’s not free from clichés. Starting out as a beautiful mysterious slave girl, she is revealed to know more than she lets on and has a knack for practicing magic. Also she is later revealed to have known the villain of the book… Welcome to Santa Barbara, folks!

As for the villain, Count Alessandro Silano is presented as this master manipulator and a looming threat who wants to harness whatever secrets the ancient secrets and/or powers this medallion can potentially provide. In reality, however, he’s more of a hammy movie villain who likes to monologue, has no positive traits whatsoever has the same ability to survive the impossible as Gage does. Or maybe they both can just respawn, I dunno.

Unfortunately, “cliché” and “flat” are the best adjectives to describe most original characters in the story. Gage’s friend, Antoine Talma, is your typical intrepid reporter but at least he’s more relatable than Gage; Ashraf, a Mameluke Gage captures, is just a loyal servant who is there to conveniently swoop in and rescue Gage Deus ex machina style, etc.

It’s basically modern clichés served under the “sauce” of the Frev setting.

By the way, Napoleon is there as well and he gives me the same vibes as the Nazi villains in the first Indiana Jones movie. He only cares about people who are useful to him, doesn’t give a shit about his troops and also wants to harness the abilities that medallion potentially can provide so he can use those powers to CONQUER THE WORLD!

Most other historical figures only have minor roles, but I’m glad we got cameos of people like Kléber, Vivant Denon and other military men and scientists who were actually part of that campaign.

5. The Setting

Unfortunately, even the descriptions of settings leave a lot to be desired. They’re just blander than stale bread and I’m not even sure how accurate they are. Probably inaccurate as fuck though, if I’m being honest…

Paris is this city of vices like brothels and gambling houses and this setting is hyperbolic like we’re in a noir detective story.

Egypt is a treasure trove of orientalist clichés - a land of mysteries, cruel people, beautiful women and wise scholars who may or may not dabble in magic. That being said, I liked the fact that the book took a sledgehammer to clichés about harems.

6. The Writing

Ooh boy, I have some complaints here too. Aside from the distractingly long backstory tidbits I already ranted about, that is.

For example, basic French grammar and spelling have clearly left the chat because there are characters whose last names are spelled d’Liberté and d’Bonneville (de is only turned into d’ before vowels or the letter “h”) and at one point there’s a hotel called Le Cocq instead of Coq (rooster). The book was written in 2007 so it’s not like the author couldn’t look up the words and basic grammar that I learned in fifth grade!

These may seem like tiny mistakes, but if the author didn’t bother to look up the basics, then this makes me concerned about other mistakes in the novel that I probably missed. So yeah, take everything in this with a grain (or a barrel) of salt.

Last but not least, this:

This is where General Dumas and General Desaix make a cameo. Now, it seems fine… except there’s no prior mention of them being present in this scene at all before they speak their lines so… did these two just randomly poof into existence or something?

Also, these two suffer from Delayed Introduction Syndrome ™️, which means we don’t find out who the fuck these men are until a few chapters later and we don’t get any descriptions of them before that either.

Why is this an issue? Well, other minor characters in the book do get a proper introduction and a brief description IMMEDIATELY or SHORTLY after being mentioned, so there is an inconsistency here, especially since some minor characters get TOO MUCH time dedicated to their descriptions despite the fact that they are not part of the main cast (d’Liberté in particular gets too much attention).

Also, some descriptions in the book are unintentionally funny, like a part where Gage compares a woman’s nipples poking out of her cleavage to soldiers sticking heads out of a trench. Yes, this is the real comparison in the book and it fucking cracked me up.

One thing I appreciate, however, is the fact that the narrative doesn’t shy away from describing gruesome injuries like traumatic amputations and sometimes the author does have the balls to permanently kill off an important character (said characters has a really gruesome death btw). I don’t mind blood and gore like this, but trigger warning just in case you’re more squeamish than me.

7. The Conclusion

All in all, instead of being a cool swashbuckling adventure, “Napoleon’s Pyramids” comes off as an Indiana Jones ripoff with clichés stacked onto one another like Jenga blocks, a cast of bland characters, mistakes that could be easily corrected by a few Internet searches and inconsistent writing.

Do I recommend it? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Please don’t waste your time on this novel.

Okay, with that said, it’s time to conclude today’s meeting of the Jacobin Fiction Convention.

Please stay tuned for updates on future reviews and stay safe.

Love,

Citizen Green Pixel