Pressed upon me by a colleague, it took me a few weeks to really get into Rebel in which we meet young Nathaniel Starbuck, a Bostonite who’s fled to the South to escape the wrath of his abolitionist preacher father who is most upset that Nate has stolen a bunch of money for and then been abandoned by a floozy. Narrowly avoiding being tarred by an angry Southern mob thanks to a timely rescue by his friend’s father and wealthy landowner Washington Falcouner, Nate finds himself pledging his loyalty to his new benefactor against the North in the civil war that’s about to kick off.
Although it was never boring, I found it hard to get through the first half of the book thanks to a distracted mind and the fact that I wasn’t really interested in rooting for the wrong side in the war I’m glad they lost. But as time went on and the preening peacocks around Nate showed themselves to be spectacularly unsuited to the leadership roles they’d bestowed upon themselves, and my mind strayed less and less to Battlestar Galactica every time Starbuck’s name was mentioned, and I found a murderer to be one of the only characters I wouldn’t mind surviving, it became a far quicker read.
The last chunk, once every arrogant incompetent had the smirks wiped off their faces as battle kicked off, flew by with Cornwell doing a sterling job of delivering a bloody and chaotic slaughter and elevating the book from the 2 it would have got beforehand to a 3. But I can’t say I’m super obsessed with the idea of tearing through the rest of this series.
