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‘Young Bloods’ begins Simon Scarrow’s trilogy about the lives, careers and fates of Napoleon Bonaparte and Arthur Welsey, later to be known as The Duke of Wellington. This first book follows both characters from birth until their twenties, a time when they each take part in their first significant military action. While the two main characters come from different countries and fight on different sides they have similar upbringings and family histories, a point that Scarrow rams home in the epilogue just in case readers missed all the pointers throughout the novel. They’re both born in the same year, both grow up with aristocratic connections, but little money and when they’re sent away to school, both feel the negative impact on their relationships with their fathers. By writing an alternating narrative, that follows one of the boys through a set of years, then jumps back to the beginning of this period and follows the other, Scarrow makes it absolutely clear that the fates of these two similar boys are connected with each other.Napoleon and Arthur emerge from their similar upbringings with different ideas about class and rule. Napoleon has been born in subjugated Corsica that longs for independence and he feels sympathy for the common people of France, who are treated unjustly by the aristocrats. Arthur identifies more with the upper class and wants the systems he has grown up with to be preserved. He is frustratingly blind to the injustices committed against the people, convinced that their interests are best served by the upper classes remaining in power. Scarrow has pulled a clever revisionist trick here, by making young Napoleon much more likeable than young Arthur. Although Napoleon can be sly and proud it’s hard not to feel that he is on the side of right, as he fights to be judged on merit not birth, whereas Arthur wants to keep the poor down so that rich, worthless men can take all the top positions. It’s an especially galling attitude as Arthur is portrayed as just such a feckless, anti-intellectual toff. Scarrow is careful to show that Arthur’s ideas are created by the time he lives in, as he sees the carnage that a rampaging mob can cause when he is young, but it’s hard not to feel that Scarrow is supporting Napoleon more strongly than Arthur in this early book. Readers may know that Napoleon is going to turn into a dictator in later books, but in ‘Young Bloods’ we see the intelligent, passionate seeds that inspire his political ideals. Unfortunately these will be corrupted later.
Apart from this reversal of received opinion ‘Young Bloods’ is standard fare for its historical subgenre (military historical fiction or something like that). The writing is solid, storytelling prose and there are some gripping battle scenes towards the end of the book that make it an entertaining way to spend quite a few hours. However there are certainly parts you can skim, without paying much attention and I thought it could have done with losing a bit of bulk. It’s the characterisation of Napoleon and the emerging growth of Arthur (he’s still an ass by the end of the book, but at least he begins to work hard and make something of himself by the end of the book) that makes this book worth reading, rather than the substance of the writing or plot.
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