Victors and Lords (Alexander Sheridan Adventures) (v. 1) [Paperback]

V. A. Stuart (Author)

Book Description

Series: Alexander Sheridan Adventures | Publication Date: October 1, 2001

Unfairly forced out of the army for insubordination, Alexander Sheridan leaves Britain and his former life behind to command a unit of the East India Company. Despised by the aristocratic generals of the regular army, Sheridan and his corps of volunteers must face both the rigors of combat and the treachery of men who should be allies in the heat of the deadly battles of the Crimean War.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Vivid details of scarlet soldiering and experienced craft in story-telling." -- The Tatler

From the Publisher

Under various pseudonyms, V.A. Stuart wrote several series of military fiction and numerous other novels, her settings spanning history and the globe, from the Napoleonic wars of Europe to India under the British Raj. Born in 1914, she was in Burma with the British Fourteenth Army, became a lieutenant, and was decorated with the Burma Star and the Pacific Star. McBooks Press will be publishing both her Alexander Sheridan Series, set during the Crimean War and the Sepoy rebellions in 1850s India, and later her Philip Hazard Saga, tales of the Royal Navy, compared favorably to Forester's Hornblower books and called "in many ways, a superior creation."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: McBooks Press (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0935526986
• ISBN-13: 978-0935526981
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,294,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Accurate but sardonic title, April 15, 2002

By 

tertius3 (MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Victors and Lords (Alexander Sheridan Adventures) (v. 1) (Paperback)

This book has strong elements of a Victorian romance novel mixed with military elements. There is as much attention to the officer's women as to soldiers. The story takes place during the amateurish British campaign (after 40 years of peace) west around the Black Sea to the Crimea in support of the Ottoman Turks against the Russians. Alexander Sheridan is a disdained but competent English officer. It's hard to like him much, for he's a bit wooden. He's been a bit of a fool in love and gotten himself cashiered from the regular army and fled to India. He's in love with one or the other of the two beautiful Mowbray sisters who suddenly appear in his battle zone. The sentimentality and reticence seen in the relations between the genders may be true to the period (1854), and overlays a still hard world. The main thread is the forlorn lost love between Capt. Sheridan and Charlotte, rather than the fierce personal and battle emotions when he joins the Light Brigade (yes, THAT infamous brigade, so yu know what must happen...). Alex and the girls' eight years together in India are entirely skipped, so tight is the focus on the romantic triangle of the moment. Dialogue is restricted to proper Victorian discreetness. We are spared battlefield carnage, as military affairs are kept in the distance. The author, a WW II British lieutenant herself, foregrounded the suffering of women surrounded by men at war, trying to survive and nurse cholera victims in appalling filth and disorder, and striving to keep or get an officer husband while crazed with fear or jealousy.

The Crimean battles are mostly described in offialese from the generals' and units' perspectives, with no overview of the strategy. There's nothing of the personal fear and shock of raw troops, or the novelistic here. At least until the inadvertant Charge of the Light Cavalry Brigade, when we get to see through Sheridan's eyes the confusion and horror of that affair, when "cannon volleyed and thundered...someone had blundered" (Tennyson). Amid the filth it lift's one's heart to see Emmy Mobray open the way for Florence Nighingale to begin the army nursing profession. The presentation is good and includes two vintage maps.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Free of Charge, June 8, 2002

By 

C. Tim Cole (München) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Victors and Lords (Alexander Sheridan Adventures) (v. 1) (Paperback)

Probably the worst historical novel I have ever read. One half of the book consists of a syrupy faux-Victorian love story between cardboard characters, the other sounds as if it was lifted verbatim from one of the duller pre-World War I military textbooks. It would seem hard to make the Charge of the Light Brigade sound as exciting as the daily Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, but that is exactly what Ms. Stuart's does. Obviously the publisher is trying to cash in on the current vogue in 18th and 19th century soldier and sailor yarns by republishing this dud, but you'd do better to save your money and re-read the Sharpe series instead.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars not a very good series, December 29, 2005

By 

Koba (Reston, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Victors and Lords (Alexander Sheridan Adventures) (v. 1) (Paperback)

I agree with Tim Cole - the Sheridan series is pretty weak. V.A. Stuart is no Bernard Cornwell. The author knows her history well enough, but the main character isn't very interesting, nor does he really do anything interesting, despite being involved in the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. On the whole, I was glad I got these from the library rather than buying them.