Book Review: An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer

On the eve of battle, passions are running high... In the summer of 1815, with Napolean Bonaparte marching down from the north, Brussels is a whirlwind of parties, balls and soirees. In the swirling social scene surrounding the Duke of Wellington and his noble aides de camp, no one attracts more attention than the beautiful, outrageous young widow Lady Barbara Childe. On their first meeting, dashing Colonel Charles Audley proposes to her, but even their betrothal doesn't calm her wild behavior. Finally, with the Battle of Waterloo raging just miles away, civilians fleeing and the wounded pouring back into the town, Lady Barbara discovers where her heart really lies, and like a true noblewoman, she rises to the occasion, and to the demands of love, life and war...

This is the second book I've read from Georgette Heyer (here's the first), and I've found her to be a writer of solid historical Regency romances. I've just found out by looking this book up that An Infamous Army is the third book in a trilogy, which is not mentioned at all in my 1970s copy. To be fair I skim or ignore everything before chapter one. The title comes from a phrase the Duke of Wellington wrote in a letter complaining about how ill-prepared and -uniformed his army was. 

Basically this book is Barbieheimer, if the Barbie part were a historical Regency romance novel and the Oppenheimer part were a dry, grim Napoleonic war novel. Actually, I just remembered the heroine's name is actually Barbara so that works perfectly! She's a young widow who is so beautiful and bewitching that she's constantly surrounded by enthralled lovesick men. She's scandalous because she flirts with all of them and paints her toenails gold like a Parisian prostitute!! Quel horreur!!! Alexa, play "Maneater" (either version works fine). The hero is Colonel Audrey, a dashing handsome man who is boring sensible and respectable; this is contradicted in the text by him falling in love with Barbara at first sight and proposing like the second time they meet, as well as him being stupid enough to think Barbara will stop being such a scandalous flirt after they're engaged, despite her telling him straight to his face that she won't stop and will keep doing whatever she wants. He's like "no you won't" and then gets all surprised Pikachu face when she does. Who could have foreseen this??? I don't get why he had to be so much older than her (about ten years). GH really had a thing for older male love interests; in The Nonesuch her hero was like 35 (like Audrey) and her heroine was 28. The gendered double standards re: aging are annoying to me.

The war half of this book is about the Duke of Wellington planning/preparing for war, which mostly seems to consist of him writing letters during the day and then going to balls and dances at night. He's basically the third main character of this book. Audrey is one of his aides, and other aids and their love interests are side characters. This part of the book is very dry and boring; when we get to the Battle of Waterloo it's very violent and sad with all the deaths and injuries. The injured survivors basically crawl to the town where the civilians are staying and the ladies bind up wounds etc. as best they can. The two halves of the book are very inharmonious and the nonexistent transitions between the two are jarring. It'll be like: "Her eyes flashing, Barbara bounded away. [paragraph break] The Duke of Wellington sat down to write a letter..." Heyer really did her research (she has a bibliography in the back of the book; take note, nonfiction writers) and did her best to write about the Duke of Wellington and the Battle of Waterloo in an accurate way, but it would have been better if she'd split the two books up. Pick a lane, Heyer. Don't go chasing war-terfalls; stick to the rivers and the balls that you're used to. Barbarloo was not fun; at least Barbieheimer was two different films so you could choose to skip one. Oh, and the ending was so abrupt I turned the page and was shocked to find it blank. Did they lose a page? Or did Heyer really think the best way to end the book was to have, you guessed it, the Duke of Wellington sit down to write a letter? 

Score: 3 out of 5 stars
Spice score: 0.5 out of 5 chilies 🌶 (just kissing)
Read in: March 30-31
From: a used bookstore called Griffeys' Book Emporium

Trigger warnings: death, dismemberment, limb loss, war, violence, fighting, animal (horses) death, period-typical sexism, period-typical sex shaming, teenage girl forced to marry much older man (past, off-page), infidelity I think