Some Context

"To Be or Not to Be" appears in Act III, Scene 1 of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. I consider it one of Shakespeare's 'problem soliloquys' along with "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" from Macbeth Act V, Scene 5, as both possess nothing in particular to do with their plays at large. They are thematic: they do not advance the pl…

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Act I

Nineteen to twenty-three, I carried with
Me in my backpack everywhere I went
A No Fear Shakespeare reader of the play
Hamlet. In school we'd read the Scottish Play
And Romeo and Juliet; from these
I learned that I myself indeed was quite
The fan of all the Bard's great tragedies.

Of all those I had read and seen, I knew
From Slings & Arrows, Canada's premiere
Satirical Shakespearian tele-
Vision series, that Hamlet would to me
Be fondest of the lot.

This was despite
That never had I watched or read the play
Myself, not in its entirety.
Yet even so I felt, from what I'd seen,
A kinship with the Melancholy Prince,
Though whereupon I knew precisely not.

But all this changed when I enrolled into
An acting class anon, and there, one night
When choosing of a scene, the instructor
Did direct me toward Elsinore, and thus
I knew my course. And so I learned my true
Love for Prince Hamlet, melancholy Dane;
A man with whom I felt such kindred pain.

Act II

Therefore it comes as no surprise to hear
I have myself a certain set of strong
Opinions on how this play should be
Presented in production. Alas!
I never had the good fortune before
The days of COVID came to see Hamlet
Performed as live upon a city's stage,
But I have seen all the most notable
Cinematic adaptations, which all,
I find, share with themselves a certain trait:
A little more than goodly, less than good.

Of all I've seen, the best filmed in Russian,
The worst with Benedict Cucumberpatch,
None seem to get the play, and above all
The Prince himself, quite right. Unlike Macbeth,
For which the mean, I would contest, is good
Enough, every production of Hamlet
Gets at the play at least half wrong. Even
The finest, Russian Gamlet, alongside
Branagh's fourteen hour long masterpiece,
Do err greatly from how I think the play
Should play, indeed needs play, if it is to
Achieve its full effect as well as e'en
A poor production of King Lear might do.

I have myself the role performed pieces
Across the last four years; so it should come
As no surprise that this has coloréd
My views on what and what not should be done
If putting on this show. So be aware
That all the thoughts enclosed herein are but
My own subjective, tainted feelings on
Hamlet, the man and play and tale alike;
But bold enough I am to claim aloud
That truly great a show of Hamlet ne'er
Has e'er been put to film. The reasons why?
Well, thus I will an explanation try.

Act III

Unlike the other tragedies, Hamlet
Is strange. Its plot meanders, focus lost:
Of five acts, two are spent confirming that
Which viewers know already to be true--
That Claudius indeed did slay the king.
The antic disposition once assumed
To us in modern day makes no to lit-
Le sense. Perhaps some context has been lost
That to Elizabethans would explain
The gain in false erratic behavior.
All this and more does complicate the tale
And makes the Prince himself the key to the
Whole show, in such a way that other plays
Suffer not from.

Perhaps it comes as no
Great shock that Hamlet is the key with which
A play named Hamlet might be thus unlocked;
And yet the point I mean to make is that
Hamlet, the man, is just what's always wrong,
From Branagh to Olivier, and from
Tennant to Smoktunovsky, all these fail,
Great actors though they are, to find
The core of who the char'ter is. Foremost:

Always is Hamlet played too old. He is, despite
Being perhaps the hardest role in all of theatre,
A child. The play ceases to make all sense
When Prince Hamlet is played adult; wherefore
Would he have not ascended to the throne
If he himself was yet of age? The plot
And all its hue hinges completely on
This fact.

Hamlet, if passed over for king
Once an adult, is cast himself
As deficient somehow in character--
Whereas in fact we're told this much, that as

[Hamlet is] loved of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgement, but their eyes.
And where 'tis so, th' offender's scourge is weighed,
But never the offense.

(Spoken by Claudius: Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 3)

In words much easier to parse: the Prince
Is popular with common folk, and so
King Claudius is thus constrained in what
He is allowed to do to dispatch with
His ever-more annoying nephew-son.

The only explanation for his uncle's
Ascendancy to king, therefore, is the
Minority of Prince Hamlet. This goes
Similarly to show how sane the Prince
Must be, to be beloved so by those
Of the many "distracted multitude."
Throughout all of the play it is remarked
How well a king Hamlet would make, once he
Was old enough to bear the weight of all
The realm of Denmark. It is thus alone
That we conclude Hamlet must be a child
If at all the story is to function.

Yet more significant reasons remain
Why Hamlet should, at most, be twenty years
Of age, or leastways played as a young man,
E'en if the actor in the part is fully grown.
This is because, at all its core, Hamlet's
Primary task is to determine what
A type of man he is: a warrior or
A poet? To be a king, or be a bard?
The Prince's tragedy is not that he
Cannot make up his mind, as many claim,
But that he does not know who he should be at all.
His mother wants a prince; his father wants
A vengeful warrior; he himself, howe'er,
Seems nothing more to want than be a bard.
Of all the conflict in the play, foremost
Is youthful confusion, uncertainty,
Duty placed in antithesis to dreams:

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

(Spoken by Hamlet: Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2)

With these prose words spoken above so clear
Is made this fact: were not that Hamlet had
Bad dreams, tormented by his father's ghost,
To be an actor and a prince contents
Him well enough. It's duty thus that sets
Him on his course, and forces him to choose
'Tween what he wants, and what he's forced to do.

There is no boy for whom this question fails
To stoop. Yet should an older boy, a man,
By thirty at the latest, answers lack,
The fault lies not upon his stars, nor in
The nature of mankind, but in himself.
That tale is not a tragedy; it is a farce.

Indeed it is my opinion that all
The characters within this play
Should be as young as they can be playéd.
What cause has Claudius to love the Queen
When she is old, and withered, best unseen?
The King is cool, well-liked by all, and he
Should thus be played as such.
T'was not, methinks, poor Billy's plan,
For Claudius to be so old a man:

Act IV

The qualities that best distinguish The
Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
from Shakespeare's other tragic works
Lie in its sense of humor and of wit.
A cautionary tale though might it be,

HAMLET IS FUNNY.

From out his lips fly jokes and puns and jibes
With wit enough to even Yorrick shame.
Hamlet's defining feature as a man
Is his quick wit and excellent fancy,
Though deeply tarnished it may be of late.
This is the greatest reassurance in
The play that he in fact is sane. As has
Been said by many a critic, Hamlet
Is far-away the sanest person in the play.

Combined with Polonius' foolishness,
For Polonius is the best among
All Shakespeare's many clowns, Hamlet is thus
A play that bursts with irony and jokes,
Just waiting on the page to be let out.

And yet they never are, 'least not in film.
Take Branagh, who I use, though flawed he be,
For overall a strength in soliloquys:

Act II, Scene 2: Polonius to King
Claudius reads the poems Hamlet wrote
And gifted to his daughter out of love:

Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the son doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar,
Never doubt I love.

This poem reads to me innocuous.
A young, infatuated man grants to
The target of his crush a love poem.
I do maintain the notion that Ophelia
And Hamlet slept together ere the play
Began to be absurd. Who for his lover writes
Such innocent and boyish poetry? It's thus
That when Polonius responds aghast
To this so simple a declaration of
A young man's love, he is thus made to seem
All more the fool.

And yet! In Branagh's scene the music swells,
The lady in her eyes has tears, the shock
Upon the faces of the cast is clear
And all the joke within this scene, the joke
That Polonius is a busy-body'd fool,
Is lost. So melodrama earned, all mirth
Is stricken from the play.

(I would provide a screenshot of the scene
With which my point to illustrate. Alas,
Jeff Bezos has decreed that such a use--
Though fair and legal yet it is--should be
Impossible to do when snipping from
An Amazon webplayer video.
I offer thus instead this picture of a cat:)

Alas, this is
But one example from Branagh's account.
His cruelest sin of all in this regard
Is his delivery, whereby he fails
To get across Prince Hamlet's wit. In place
Of boyish playfulness he acts anger;
Intense the whole play through, not even with
The players, or Horatio, does his
Intensity e'er wane. In short, he comes
Across as madder than the prince, methinks,
E'er should. When Hamlet with his wit doth strike,
To Branagh does this seem to signal madness,
And not, in fact, to show how sane the boy remains.

(To be entirely frank, playing Hamlet this way ruins the character Shakespeare wrote. When Branagh channels Hamlet's sanity and his wit, as he does with Osric right before the final confrontation with Laertes, he has the character down precisely as I'd wish to see him. But only in that one scene. Nowhere else does Hamlet feel witty; he is otherwise only mad, insane, or acting. All in all, he's impossible to understand when presented in this fashion.)

But 'bove all else Branagh never seems to
Be thoughtful or contemplative. These two
Character traits combined are oft what we
Do think of first when first we think of Hamlet.

Be all this as it is, his performance
Remains the best of all the ones I've seen;
For though such madness comes across as wrong
When put in larger frame with all the play,
At least does he do something with the man.
And criticize his film although I might,
He does with Claudius the best I've seen in film.

One more remark on Branagh dear I have.
The fault which he, along with all other
Movies save one do seem to share, lies in
The fair Ophelia.

She's wrong.

So wrong.

To make this clear to all who read me now
I draw attention to the film Gamlet.

This marvelous translation of the Bard
Alas rests far without my plan today.
It dazzles and amazes with its scope
And all its care for history. But 'bove
All else where most it shines is in Ophelia.

Ophelia must have these qual'ties three:
She must be pure as ice, as chaste as snow,
And as a puppet to her father's will.

Thus when her father is by Hamlet sent
Anon to supper with the worms, the girl,
Her brother absent at the time, her love
Rebuked (upon her dad's request), is left
Without a man to pull her strings and give
Her body movement. A pretty puppet,
Nothing more: that's all Ophelia should be.

Yet always in these films she's hideous,
With buckéd teeth and too-large eyes, and no
Clear cause why any man would be in love
With her, except on pain of torture or on death.

Beyond, she's normal, nothing much: a girl
On no point to remark. For Branagh's film
This is a deathly touch. Wherefore comes madness
When Ophelia is but a normal girl?
Always too modern is she made, too free
And liberated from femininity.

When played proper, as in Gamlet
She stands in as a proxy for all young
Women of feudal aristocracy:
So robbed by men of all her agency,
This is, not else, the girl's tragedy.

(The line I'm quoting above, from the infamous Get Thee to a Nunnery scene, is the largest proof, by the way, that Hamlet and Ophelia haven't slept together. Ophelia IS as pure as ice. She IS as chaste as snow. And thus, once her father dies, her only recourse to "escape calumny," as Hamlet puts it, is to die. This obviously makes no sense if she and the Prince are sexually engaged. This fact is so blindingly obvious to me that I sometimes wonder if anyone who plays the two as in-the-sheets lovers has actually read the play. This is to say nothing of the fact that Hamlet himself is a boy who channels youthful feelings of romantic confusion and sexual frustration; again, all that is ruined if his relationship with Ophelia is played as carnal and not that of a childish mutual infatuation--if he in fact could have Ophelia, were it just not for Polonius. OH, ALSO, the only one who insinuates that Hamlet and Ophelia ARE having sex is Polonius, the FOOL, who's the FOOL, who is FOOLISH, who is saying things that obviously aren't true because he's a FOOL. Only fools would follow the foolish in devising an interpretation of this play.

Act V

And so it is it can be known why I
Think none on screen have ever got the Dane
Quite right. The play is long and full of twists
And though the role be one all actors wish
To play, in fact Hamlet is nothing like
All other tragic 'heroes' of Shakespeare.
Tender is he, sensitive, soft, with wit
Beyond compare: he's thoughtful, playful,
Both cruel and kind; confused and sad, yet brilliant all the same.
Ingenious, choleric as melancholic,
Yet funnier than any man could swear.

Perhaps I be too prideful to proclaim
That in Hamlet I see what others don't;
But yet it is that never have I seen
Him done in just the way he reads to me,
Upon the page, in which I see myself.

One final word, ere I depart, is to
Remark upon how well the Dane has dwelt
Within my mind. For four years since, when e'er
I'm down, I hear his voice in mine, saying,
"Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"
Or else, "to be, or not to be, that is the question;"
I think, "There's nothing either good or bad
But thinking makes it so;" and always do
I try my best to shine my wit as bright
As his. And thus I think it safe to say:
With Hamlet William Shakespeare bridged the times,
And to this day, the genius in his soul still rhymes.

An Influential Legacy

Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel Starship Troopers occupies a strange place in modern cultural discourse. On one hand, practically every trope of 21st Century military science fiction is derived from this singular piece of literature; on the other, mention the book these days and expect nine time out of ten to be told that it's a cry…

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Between the late '60s and early '00s, British historian, newspaper man, and WWII veteran George Macdonald Fraser wrote and published a series of eleven novels and one short story anthology following the military exploits of Sir Harry Paget Flashman, the infamous bully from 1857 English classic novel Tom Brown's School Days.

It turned out that, after being expelled from Rugby School in the late 1830s, Flashman had joined the 11th Hussars and gone on to become one of England's most decorated war heroes. The Flashman Papers are his purported memoirs. Through Flashman's eyes Fraser explores all of Victorian military history, from the Kabul Retreat to the Boer War. Flashman was there for it all.

I've been slowly making my way through all twelve of the Flashman books for the last two and a half years. Now that I'm finally done, I can report that Fraser was perhaps the finest novelist of the 20th century. His books are works of both comedic genius and compelling historical drama. His foremost intention was to capture (in a readable modern style) the realities of British colonialism, not just in action, but in thought and speech. Harry Flashman himself is a lying, bullying, toadying, lecherous poltroon, who, by virtue of cowardice and good luck, emerges from each adventure looking like a hero--which only brings about more trouble in the end.

This conceit has been much-plagiarized since the release of Flashman in the 1960s. Readers of this blog might be most familiar with Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain series, which is an adaptation of Flashman into the 41st Millennium.

But however brilliant they may be conceptually, the Papers are sold in execution. What makes the series so brilliant is, in actuality, its historical basis, and its superb writing. These are the things I wish to discuss here.

Reach Out and Touch History

There's little doubt that Flashman is on the verge of cancellation, if he hasn't been pushed off that particular cliff already. Fraser pulls no punches in his depiction of the man and the time he resided in. Aside from the series' unflinching depictions of racism, Flashman is among the least politically correct character to have been written within the last half century.

And it is glorious.

Plenty of novels are set in the past, but few achieve what Fraser accomplished twelve-and-a-half times. Flashman, through his mannerisms, through his speech and his thoughts, is the past. It is as if a man from another century has been resurrected in your mind. And unlike any real memoirs from the Victorian era, you'll be able to actually get through his writing without falling asleep.

Harry Flashman, his wife Elspeth, his father-in-law John Morrison, and his archnemesis John Charity Spring are the only prominent characters throughout the series who are fictional. Nearly everyone else, from ally to antagonist, is a real, historical person, including the majority of the women Flashman beds (and sometimes weds). Every event is historical, too, with the exception of Royal Flash. Every battle, every engagement, every mission and every sword fight. When a vignette isn't rooted in definite historical fact, which is only rarely, it tends to instead be an adaptation of some otherwise real historical account--an attack on a stagecoach by Native Americans in the Old West, an encounter with sowars on the road in India.

Fraser expects the reader to come with a large degree of context pre-established. Flashman only gives a general gist of the politics before delving into his latest affair. This is why I recommend reading the series on Kindle if possible. Hyperlinks and easy access to Wikipedia makes reading the books a breeze. I'd never dare try in print.

But beyond the quality of the writing, what makes the Papers so phenomenal is Fraser's ability to animate the past. He gives a voice to the voiceless and long-dead and lets you empathize with a people who, today, seem quite alien to us. He is honest when he depicts the horrors of empire and colonialism, and he is honest when he depicts the horrors of its absence, too.

Anyone interested in colonialism and Victorian military history needs to read these books. They are, in many ways, as well-researched and accurate as any textbook you'll find on the subject. There are no historical errors anywhere. With the exception of Flashman himself, almost every scene of every book will be relating something real.

When it comes to historical fiction, no one has ever done it better than Flashy.

To Write With Fun

But history is not why I fell in love with these books. The most obvious appeal is Fraser's writing of itself. It is brilliant.

The Papers are satires of the Victorian era, and so might be regarded as comedies before anything else. This is vital, because if Flashman wasn't funny, reading these books would be like watching a snuff film. It wouldn't be fun. The events depicted, all of the worst atrocities and horrors of the 19th Century, would weigh too heavily on the reader. It would not be fun.

But Fraser never failed to find some way to make things fun. He always found some way to reinvent himself, never becoming mired in formula or conventions.

Here are some examples that come to mind:

• Throughout the series, Flashman will occasionally begin rendering exchanges of dialogue in stage play format, just to mix things up.

• In the sixth book, excerpts from Flashman's wife's diary are regularly interspersed throughout. Her prose Reflects the ways In Which a Lady of that Time Period most likely would have Written in Her Diary; that is to say, in embarrassingly florid style, with every other word capitalized for no apparent reason.

• Flashman, as a soldier, has a rather foul mouth. Several of the novels have therefore been censored by his Puritanical Scottish in-laws to remove all of the explicit language--which, of course, has been left in for our pleasure.

• The series is filled with footnotes, written from the perspective of Fraser himself as the "editor" of the collection (to keep up the charade that Flashman was, in fact, a real person).

But the books aren't simple comedies with a historical backdrop. They're also expertly written adventure novels. No one has ever written exciting action better than Fraser. He takes accounts of real military action and roots them in Flashy's perspective without ever losing sight of the human stakes and real-world consequences of violence. As a soldier himself, I have no doubt that Fraser understood what it felt like to fight for one's life better than most authors alive today ever could. He used these experiences to great effect in the Flashman Papers.

Most important of all, the Papers are relentlessly dramatically engaging. There will never come a chapter where you will not wonder what is going to happen next, and there will never be a character whose fate does not enrapture you. And when Fraser wants Flashman to be taken seriously, when he's describing the death march from the Siege of Cawnpore or the butchering of British civilians by Indian mutineers, no other author could shock, horrify, and reduce to tears so well.

The specters of the past resurrected in his books will haunt your memory for as long as you live.

Series Ranking and Review: A List

So I don't need to keep repeating myself, let it henceforth be known that there is not a single book in this series that I dislike. Even the first title on this list is worth reading. The difference between the best Flashy book and the worst is, quite honestly, rather slim. These rankings are based on a number of personal preferences for time, place, and subject matter, rather than any sort of objective qualifier. But if you're short on time, I would absolutely recommend the books at this list's bottom long before the ones at its top.

#12. Flashman and the Dragon (Book 8)

I was somewhat surprised when I learned that Flashman and the Dragon is often considered the worst book in the series by Fraser fanatics. It has everything you would expect: an affair with a Chinese empress, lies and deceit and betrayal, high adventure, and a fascinating setting.

Yet it left such a small impression on me. The Empress-Dowager is a retread of much more interesting Oriental femme fatales like Lakshmibai and the Silk One, and the soldiering scenes are simpler and less imaginative than many others. Ultimately, Flashman and the Dragon lacks the bite of the other books in the series; it has nothing exciting that makes it stand out as anything more than a decent historical comedy-adventure novel. For that reason I relegate it to the spot of the "worst" book in the Flashman Papers.

#11. Flashman and the Tiger (Book 11)

A collection of short-ish stories and a novella, Flashman and the Tiger sees Flashy meet Sherlock Holmes, ties up a loose thread from Royal Flash, and depicts a sword fight that lasts for about two hundred pages.

Overall, I like the shorter, more plot-focused narratives found within this book. The characters are not Fraser's best, but there are memorable moments throughout--and, to be honest, I think Flashman x Holmes is a lot of fun. He doesn't overdo it.

But like Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman and the Tiger lacks the emotional heights of the series' best novels, and it doesn't try to delve into historical tragedy as Fraser's other books do. Flashman is at his best when he's embroiled in global political schemes and lost within an epic sea of war and action, forced to do great things despite his rotten heart. Here, he mostly just runs away from bad guys and whines.

That can be funny. But it's not much more than that.

#10. Flashman on the March (Book 12)

The final Flashman book, Flashman on the March is fantastic as always, but was written when Fraser was in his 80s. It has one of the series' most interesting setting: the British expedition to Abyssinia, which is a little-known but surreal and fascinating piece of Victorian history, handled with the deftness anyone would expect.

But Fraser's age shows through the pages. The beginning meanders, and his outrage at Bush & Co. for the invasion of Iraq seems to bleed through Flashman's usual narration. The climax is strong, but it took me more than a year to completely read it through. I would place Flashman on the March among the best in the series for its subject matter, but among the worst in action, plot, and pacing.

#9. Flash for Freedom (Book 3)

Flash for Freedom sees Flashy shipped off for his first American adventure. The first half of the story takes place onboard an illegal slaving vessel in the Atlantic in the 1840s; the second follows Flashman on land throughout the Antebellum South.

In many ways, I'd say that this is one of Fraser's finest books. The beginning, with unforgettable antagonist John Charity Spring, is phenomenal, and would rank near the top of this list taken on its own. The action is unending and the stakes never let up.

But the second half becomes very unpleasant, as Flashy takes up work as a slavedriver on a plantation, has an affair with a horrendous Southern aristocrat, and betrays some of the series' most sympathetic characters. This is Harry Flashman at his absolute worst, and while he's still charming in his way, the heaviness of the subject matter makes him wear on the reader far more than he does elsewhere.

In the final book on this list, Flashman's view of himself is overly critical: he actually does behave heroically, despite having immoral motivations. But in Flash for Freedom, he's really just an awful, evil bastard.

Don't think that means I wouldn't recommend it. I absolutely would, for all the expected reasons. There is a reason why Flash for Freedom is often listed among the best books in the series. But I like it a lot less than some of the others, so I place it at #9.

#8. Flashman and the Redskins (Book 7)

Flashman and the Redskins is the longest novel in the series by far, effectively containing both the sequel to Flash for Freedom AND a self-contained sequel to that story within a single package. Many consider it Fraser's finest work, and it's not hard to understand why. This is a beautifully researched and presented adventure through the West, spanning decades and incorporating just about every character you could hope for.

But as an American (and a Western writer myself), I learned very little from Flashman and the Redskins. As amusing as it is to see a British Army colonel fight at Little Bighorn, I find none of the sense of mystery and awe in the unfamiliar as I do in the Indian novels especially. This is likely the reason why I don't like the American Flashman novels as much as those set in Europe and the East, generally, and why I won't rank this book any better than #8.

#7. Flashman's Lady (Book 6)

It took me a year to get through the first third of Flashman's Lady and about four hours to get through the rest. Its beginning is slow, bogged down in the intricacies of cricket, but its latter half is fabulous. This book has several of the series' best action sequences and many of its most interesting dramatized historical personas, if for no other reason than that I'd never heard of any of them before. His depictions of Queen Ranavalona and the atrocities of Madagascar under her rule are particularly unforgettable.

But the main reason why I place it here is because it's the only book in the series in which we receive excerpts from anyone else's perspective--in this case, Elspeth Flashman's . This is also the only book in which Elspeth actually gets to do anything in the plot, for fairly obvious reasons. This was a brilliant twist on the Flashman formula and the perfect way to get a new look at the eponymous character. That alone earns this book its place on this list.

#6. Flashman and the Mountain of Light (Book 9)

Flashman and the Mountain of Light is the most plot-driven Flashman story, and one of the two major Indian novels. While its flurry of characters can be hard to keep track of, it's a beautifully structured adventure that builds to the finest climax in all of the Flashman Papers. It does everything a Flashman book should, and does so very, very well.

#5. Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (Book 10)

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord is the exception to my general apathy toward Flashy's American expeditions. Its beginning features the ultimate appearance of arch-nemesis John Charity Spring, and it's significantly more awesome than could ever be anticipated. I've re-read the first act of this book several times over the last few years; it really is just that good.

The story is otherwise about Flashman's participation in John Brown's suicidal raid on Harper's Ferry. Although I could do without the numerous scenes involving the proto-KKK, the complex and contradictory character of Brown himself is animated precisely as I think he should have been by Fraser, and the raid itself captures both the absurdity and the tragedy of the real-world event. No one will ever write a historical novel about Brown better than this.

#4. Royal Flash (Book 2))

Writing retrospectively, Royal Flash would probably have been ranked among my least favorite books in the series. This would have beem a mistake. At the time of reading, it was actually my favorite, and it remained so for quite some time. Rudi Stamberg and Otto von Bismark are phenomenal antagonists, and the farcicality of the main storyline--wherein Flashman is abducted by Bismark in order to impersonate a fictional German prince, with whom he shares a startling resemblance--is too good to resist.

This is the only Flashman book set in a fictional country, during a fictional geopolitical affair (although rooted in German unification), but Bismark's portrayal more than makes up for that deficiency in this regard.

As with all of the remaining titles in this ranking, Royal Flash was impossible for me to put down. It consumed my every thought until I'd made it to the final page. For someone like me, who so often struggles with fictional apathy, this is a feat of amazing proportions, and that's why Royal is #4 on this list.

#3. Flashman (Book 1)

The original, eponymous entry to the series. Flashman has it all. Indian intrigue, a Duke of Wellington cameo, Queen Victoria, Elspeth and her father, the horrors of war, obscene numbers of sex scenes, and the series' only rape. It's funny, sad, satirical, and haunting all at the same time. Flashman is not peak Flashman, but it's pretty close. Anyone interested in the series should start here. I will say nothing further.

#2. Flashman at the Charge (Book 4)

Flashman at the Charge is about the Crimean War and acts as a prelude for the "Great Game," the allegedly imaginary feud between the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom for the control of India.

The Crimean War sections of the book are standard Flashman, executed with impugnity. They're excellent, of course, and the intrigue between Flashy and Lord Cardigan is taken to unprecedented comedic extremes. Elspeth, too, receives a fair share of attention, and she is lovely as always--and funnier than ever.

But what cements its place at the top (AKA the bottom) of my list of favorite Flashy books is its second half, in which the series' most absurd femme fatale (Ko Dali's Daughter, or the Silk One) seduces Flashman and turns him into a genuinely brave and selfless hero through the power of hashish. This is one way of many by which Fraser twists the reader's expectations and keeps him on his toes throughout the series.

Its ludicrous third act aside, Flashman at the Charge is simply the funniest book in the series. It's the Victorian military equivalent of Fargo. The dark comedy is relentless and unfailing. Unlike the final book on this list, Flashman at the Charge probably will not make you cry. But it'll certainly make you laugh.

#1. Flashman in the Great Game (Book 5)

Flashman in the Great Game is the best novel I've ever read. Although I normally don't care much about spoilers, this book is so unbelievably exciting that I can't stand to give anything away. Go read it. Right now.

Great Game is a direct sequel to At the Charge, picking up more or less where that book leaves off. Its focal point is the Indian Mutiny, and Fraser spares no expense in detailing the atrocities committed by both sides during that particular war.

The scale is unfathomable. I will never, for as long as I live, forget the frank narration of the Siege of Cawnpore, or Flashman's harrowing escape from Lucknow.

Make no mistake: although often funny, Flashman in the Great Game is the least comedic book in the series. It is brutal. It took me several weeks of regular reading to get through it all. But it's also gripping and exciting beyond compare. This was Fraser at his best, conjuring all of his memories of World War II, using every experience in the field he had to articulate the horrors of war.

This is also the storythat does the best job at expanding Flashman's psychology. Flashy is a static character, necessarily, but he's much more interesting here than in most of the other books. Unlike in Flash for Freedom, where he's a monster through-and-through, Flashy in Great Game actually is, legitimately, heroic. He performs selfless acts of valor and endures horrible pain, and his empathy for his fellow soldiers is sincere.

This is contrasted, of course, with his usual style of narration--his conviction in his own villainity, his recognition of his own cowardice. But true bravery lies not in failing to feel fear, but in conquering fear that one does feel. And that's what Flashman does in this book. He possesses a "villain complex:" he is incapable of seeing himself in a positive light, even when he deserves to.

I don't know how much of that was intentional on Fraser's part, but I think it's at the core of why I love this book so much. Flashman feels realer and more nuanced here than anywhere else, and he's not hard to get behind when facing down rebellious sepoys. This is the psychological expansion that he desperately needed, and I wish some of the later books focused more on this aspect of the character--and less on more of the same.

A Flash of Lightning

I hope this article gives a solid overview for any prospective Flashman fans out there. I wouldn't recommend the series to anyone without a large degree of self-awareness and an intense interest in colonial history, but I maintain my conviction that these are among the finest novels ever written. They're certainly better than any "L"iterature they'll have you read in college.

Oh, and one more thing--the Roddy McDowall adaptation of Royal Flash? Don't watch it. You'll thank me later.

The Flood is the second Halo novel published and the only novelization in the series' history--it is a retelling of the first game and a minor expansion of its story. I was an enormous fan of the Eric Nylund trilogy in high school but had intentionally avoided The Flood due to its negative reviews and supposed glut of action scenes; but, on a whim, following my "analysis" of Halo 4, decided to give it a go.

You may be wondering what possessed me to do this.

Well, I needed content for the book section of this blog, but that wasn't solely it. My true reasons were two-fold:

1) I believe Combat Evolved has a fantastic sci-fi military mystery story that could be adapted into an equally fantastic non-interactive narrative, and I wanted to see if The Flood author William Dietz had accomplished this.

2) I was morbidly curious as to what a prose adaptation for a video game might be like. How would it be written? How would an author handle countless repetitive action scenes that would be hard to pull off even in a film?

On these factors will I assess the novel.

But First: The Video Game Novel

I still possess a reticence to tell people I'm a "gamer." Perhaps I fear persecution for indulging in a habit that is now enormously mainstream, I don't know.

Reading is a "high cultural activity" in the US these days--that is to say, it is something that all of us pretend we do a lot more than we actually do. I'll confess that I don't read nearly as much as I should, although I do listen to a lot of audiobooks.

Reading licensed books is a different story.

For some reason, reading licensed books is a low cultural activity, not far removed from soap opera-watching. This presumably has something to do with their commercial nature: literature is art at its pinnacle, pulp is art at its most capitalistic. Dietz did not write The Flood because he had an idea, he did it because he was paid to do it.

But Michelangelo was paid to paint the Sistine Chapel. Leonardo was commissioned to paint the Mona Lisa. I think it's a mistake to write off licensed art. There may be great value hidden away within...the novelization of the first Halo video game.

Okay, it's a stretch. But you never know. Maybe Dietz is a secret genius?

The Book Itself

IT SUCKS.

#1. Is it a good story?

No.

#2: Is it well-written?

No.

The End.

Don't read it.

Okay, but seriously...

The Flood is split between actual new information on the story of Combat Evolved and a superficial, rushed, and ultimately uninteresting summary of Master Chief's ass kicking.

The general opinion among Halo fans is that the new information is good, the summarizing is bad. I don't really agree.

None of this book is good.

THE BAD

For an enormous fan of the first two games like me, the most disappointing thing about The Flood is the presentation of the Master Chief himself.

As I've argued elsewhere on this site, the main character trait of the Chief is that he is a man with no agency. He is almost machine. He is not really a perspective character for a novel; he is more interesting in third person.

But Dietz tries to turn him into a character.

Dietz's presentation preserves his sense of humor, which I appreciate, but otherwise turns him into a generic action movie soldier. Lip service is paid to the fact that he was kidnapped and abused as a child, but this isn't reflected in the character's speech. His dialogue is totally wrong. He isn't laconic. I can't remember the presentation of the Chief in the Nylund novels, but relative to the games, this isn't the same person. This is why the Chief's sections are so boring--not the preponderance of action.

He's much better with the dialogue for the other characters in the game. He does a good job with the voices of Cortana and Keyes. Unfortunately, his new characters are shallow and uninteresting.

The novel changes narration perspective constantly. Sometimes three or four times on the same page (and I read this on an iPhone, where the pages are tiny!). This means the story is dispersed between a huge number of characters and none are given the time they need to develop.

I'd like to give special recognition to the main Elite and Grunt duo, whose perspective we see regularly over the course of 400 or so pages, all building up to a dramatic confrontation with the Chief, who are killed in one sentence by a grenade. Great!

The book would have been much more interesting if it had stuck to only a handful of narrators. Were I the author, I would have chosen Keyes and Cortana. Maybe Foehammer. No one else.

Instead, we swap around with complete arbitrarity. It's very bizarre. It would be less bizarre if Dietz had simply adopted an omniscient style of prose, but he doesn't; instead each perspective swap is signaled by a page break, which is a baffling decision. I've never read a book that does this before. You would be told not to in a college-level English class.

My biggest problem with the story, though, is that it doesn't answer questions a player might have from the game--why does Keyes personally go with Johnson to discover the Covenant weapons cash before "343 Guilty Spark," what is Echo 419 up to between missions (especially at the end)--while introducing countless new ones. In fact it exacerbates existing questions. The plot of Alpha Base has basically nothing to do with the Chief's adventures and ultimately resolves itself in a single uninteresting paragraph. It doesn't mesh very well with the story of the game anyway, wherein the implication is that most marines are dead by the time of "Two Betrayals," and comes off as just filler.

Finally, the marines are too good. The Chief obviously wins every fight, which makes them pointless, but this is kind of the baggage of an FPS' novelization. What wasn't necessary was for the rest of the Autumn's crew to have godmode enabled.

The UNSC is supposed to be losing the war, but you wouldn't know it here. Major Silva and friends win every fight with minimal casualties. They would have escaped from Halo without the help from the Chief, were it not for one lieutenant deciding to blow their captured ship up to protect Earth from the Flood or whatever. I found myself actively rooting for the Covenant to win, which is probably not the intention.

The end result is that characters like Keyes and Johnson come off as inept, the Covenant come off as a joke, and there are never any stakes. We needed to see the human forces losing, with the Chief being the rock that saves the day. But that isn't the story we get. It's a huge shame.

So Who Cares?

The point of all of this is that Combat Evolved could be turned into a great sci-fi story. All of the elements are there. The plot needs to be shuffled around, but the basic concept, that the marines from Aliens have a pet Robocop and crash-land on an ancient alien doomsday weapon and need to escape, is fantastic. There's mystery, excitement, and a good cast of characters.

I've been imagining how one might adapt this story into a screenplay for many years now. It could definitely be done. It could even be done in prose. The details of the narrative would need to be changed, but the basic plot would remain.

Dietz's book, unfortunately, is not what it needed to be. It has very little going for it. It's just not interesting. I recommend you stay far away.

In college I read through the entirety of George Macdonald Fraser's historical pseudo-fiction series of novels called The Flashman Papers. I will, no doubt, sing its virtues in due time.

Here, however, I'd like to command anyone and every who hasn't already to go read Fraser's similarly brilliant Quartered Safe Out Here, his memoirs from his time as a soldier in the Pacific Theater during World War II. He was an excellent novelist with a fantastic sense of comedy and an ear for accents--of which there are many in the UK, it seems--and I can say with some certainty that Quartered Safe Out Here is among the most compelling, most moving, and most gloriously politically incorrect things I have ever read.

If you don't like books, listen to it on Audible. David Case (narrator of the Flashman series) does an excellent job with its reading.