Review: Flashman and the Tiger

Flashman and the Tiger by George MacDonald Fraser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is with a mixed feeling that I took up this one. This is the last of the Flashman for me. Letting Flashman go away is like having a fun part of life come to an end.

I started the series without much expectation thinking of it to be a period romance. So the non-conventional story telling of Fraser was a surprise, a pleasant one though. Every book had its quirk and watched the movie adaptation of the one book, it was like I was not getting enough of Flashman.

So it was with a bit of sadness that I took this one. However, I ended up feeling that probably Fraser stopped the series with the next one as otherwise he would've been trapped by the template of the stories and would've killed the fun of Flashman. By ending the series, he made sure the sense of longing lingers on.

Now to the book itself. This one is one novella and two smaller stories. Of course, the Novella follows Flashman in Vienna in the middle of the Balkan crises. There is the lady spy, the princess and of course the multiple conspiracies with a murder attempt on the Austrian emperor. Though it was good, it was not matching up with the intrigues Flashman was part of in the other continents.

The Tronby craft affair is the center of the second story which of course is the weakest of all. In fact, I stopped reading for a while with the boring back and forths of a domestic intrigue.

'Flashman and the Tiger' the last story in the book is probably the best of the lot. Again a domestic issue with flashbacks into the Zulu war, the story is racy, has Flashman in his elements and have a cameo of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson at the end.
Overall, an interesting (though partially) book.

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