Customer Reviews

The Shangani Patrol (Simon Fonthill Series)

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After devouring the first six books in this series, I was delighted with this one as well. A new adventure for Simon Fonthill, 352 Jenkins, and Alice Griffith, with some interesting new "guest stars" as well.

It's historical fiction, not history per se. If you want the straight poop on the actual Shangani Patrol, look elsewhere--and be prepared for conflicting reports and controversy. What you'll find in this novel is a page-turning story that transports you to an exotic time and place and lets you share in the adventures of some likable characters.

The only downside of this series to me--and I find it the case with most contemporary historical fiction, including that of Cornwell and Scarrow--is that it stretches to meet the modern reader halfway. Twenty-first-century ideas and idioms sneak in here and there, weakening the vicarious experience of historical adventure. But that's a catch-22 for the writer or publisher: the book has to reach today's audience; the reader has to be able to relate to the characters.

I love this period of history--the mid to late 19th century--and I'm glad to have found something other than the comedic (though wonderful) Flashman books (by George MacDonald Fraser) to take me back and enable me to experience the events of that era in my imagination.

Thumbs up from me, and I'm looking forward to Fonthill's adventures in the upcoming Boer War.

The story of the real-life Shangani Patrol is fascinating and has been told many times. It was so important to the history of Rhodesia that it was taught in every school, celebrated as a national holiday, and Cecil Rhodes asked to be buried for all eternity next to his men who died at this battle. This novel captures the flavor of the events and the final battle, but the author fictionalizes several troopers and scouts, imagining new backgrounds and even new names for well known men, and he departs from important historical fact in many key areas. In this novel, the heroic Major Wilson is portrayed as insolent to a wise Major Forbes. The critical decision to only partially re-enforce the detachment the night before the battle is seen as almost prudent even though it results in the death of nearly every man in the Patrol. Scouts Burnham and Ingram and trooper Gooding, the three real-life survivors of the Patrol, are all renamed and recast; one of these men is even remade into a tribal native. Given that the actual story of the Shangani Patrol is far more powerful and compelling than this fictionalized one, it is not easy to find a place for this version.