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Rebel: Novel of the Civil War, A |  | Author: Bernard Cornwell
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 11663
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
ASIN: B000N2HC1U
Publication Date: December 12, 2006
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Product Description
When Richmond landowner Washington Faulconer snatches young Nate Starbuck from the grip of a Yankee-hating mob, Nate is both grateful and awed by his idealistic rescuer. To repay his generosity, he enlists in the Faulconer legion to fight against his home, the North, and against his abolitionist father. When the regiment joins up, ready to march into the ferocious battle at Buff Run, the men are prepared to start a war . . . but they aren't ready for how they—and the nation—will be forever changed by the oaths they have sworn for their beloved South.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 33
Sharpe fans will enjoy this not-so-different 19th century battle depiction December 7, 2009
Daniel Berger (Atlanta, GA USA)
This is a realistic look at the outset of the Civil War, fought by two armies of untested amateurs led by inexperienced officiers, all sure they can win in a day, attain glory, and go home to their families.
Nate Starbuck, son of the North's most fiery abolitionist preacher, has fled Yale Divinity School to run off with an actress who dumps him in Richmond just as Virginia secedes. He can't go home, but meanwhile is taken in by his college roommate's father, Washington Faulconer, one of Virginia's richest men.
Faulconer is raising his own regiment for the upcoming war, while his son Adam is a pacifist seeking reconciliation between North and South. Faulconer hopes to enlist the fierce Thomas Truslow, a notorious up-country bandit, as he may bring other good fighters with him. Meanwhile Faulconer pads his upper ranks with his own ineffectual schoolmaster brother-in-law Thaddeus Bird, and his daughter's fiance, the social-climbing Ethan Ridley. Starbuck must decide where his loyalties lay, as those around him decide whether they trust him and which side of the battlefield he belongs on.
As the battle looms, Faulconer angles desperately for postwar glory, but his legion's place in the Southern military hierarchy is uncertain. He lavishly outfits his men, overloading them with gear, while paying little attention to the essentials of war. With the battle about to be joined, he can't even find a way to get them to the front.
The novel builds somewhat slowly as Cornwell creates the milieu of just-barely-antebellum Virginia, but picks up with the introduction of Truslow, Sharpeian in his low origins, his can-do persona and his ability to see through society's smokescreens to the heart of matters. Cornwell does a fine job depicting the first major battle, that known as Bull Run or Manassas, with all the confusion inherent in a brand-new country's just-thrown-together army. He also gets just right the North's mix of sanctimony and overconfidence on a day when society folk ride out from Washington with picnic lunches to watch a battle they presume will be a rout.
Sharpe fans will enjoy his treatment of a similar 19th century battle, where thousands of soldiers first experienced the blood and chaos of battle. (Cornwell uses many of his distinctive Sharpeian touches, including killing off a young innocent almost as soon as the fighting begins.) The Faulconer Legion is fictional but placed at a key point in the historical battle, where an undermanned Southern unit must hold off a shrewd and potentially catastrophic Yankee thrust towards the Confederate rear.
 enjoyable October 18, 2009
Michael J. Hudson
Cornwell is probably the best historical fiction writer today. This a very good series well written ans as always historically correct. This is not mt favorite book in the set but still enjoyable
 Disappointing.... July 6, 2007
Michael D. Mullen (adelanto, CA United States)
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
As a Cornwell fan, and a Civil War enthusiast, I believed that I would enjoy the Nathan Starbuck series, of which "Rebel" is the first. I was disappointed. First there are certain inaccuracies concerning the time period and the conflict. This in itself is not fatal, but is somewhat surprising coming from such an accomplished and proven author. Second, I found it hard to route for the main character. He is simply shallow and boring. At the end of the first book, I was only beginning to understand his primary motivation. Then I found I could not sympathize with him. That is fatal in my thinking.
Cornwell does a good job in describing the conflict at Bullrun, yet is a little short with the important role that "Stonewall" Jackson played. Still. the author is a master in describing battles and armed conflict.
I have read five of Cornwell's books. This is the only one so far I would not have given 4 or 5 stars.
Rebel is weakest in series but builds to a great finale December 27, 2006
M. Bryce (Suffolk, VA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I love this series. Rebel is the weakest in the series, but ends with the first Battle of Manassas in true Cornwell form - feels like I'm there with bullets whizzing and cannon thundering. I have the entire series read by Tom Parker - excellent reader! These are the voices of my childhood that I haven't heard in decades. I never realized how many Civil War battlegrounds I have lived and/or worked around in northern and western VA and Washington, D.C. And the villains are just as disturbing as Obediah was in the Sharpe's series. Mr. Cornwell just needs to write more books in this series. It's already been 10 years since the last one! I feel like I'm stuck in a time warp at Antietam.
 Old plot - fails to take into account new era August 20, 2006
3 out of 10 found this review helpful
Mr. Cornwell is most famous for, I believe, the Richard Sharpe series of books, which I must say I enjoyed very much. But as I am a Civil War Reenactor and hold the War, the South, and those who fought in the War, very close to me heart, I can not compliment this book on the basis that it is unoriginal and fails to take into account not only new motives for fighting as it does the difference in combat of the era.
This is Richard Sharpe all over again, man comes up from the bottom of society with the helo of some powerful people and the Army and is in a constant battle with people who want to put him down, its the 1800's all over again and it simply wont do for a completely different era of combat and culture.
This notion of an officer coming up from the ranks was great for early 19th century British army, as it was a career Army. But the Civil War lasted 4 years so this whole notion of an Officer coming up from the ranks and still using a musket and not being able to shake his old enlisted style, is rather absurd. Especialy in the South, this could possibly happen in Northern Armies but not in the South, officers WERE Gentlemen and most of the time vice-versa.
Its not only that the notion, as stated, is absurd, but the fact that Cornwell glorifies it is even worse. Now I know he's just playing on our like of the underdog, but in the South and Officer was a Gentlmen and should act like one, so this refusal to act like a proper Southern gentlemen, event hough he is from the North, just doesn't work for me. And we wonder why all his supieriors try to put him down.
The combat scenes also just don't work for me. New style of combat, and through the war it gets progresivly bloodier and more horrible (Wilderness anyone?) so this early 1800's aproach to combat just doesn't work in the world of 1860's warfare.
To be fair though, Mr. Cornwell provides a good read, Its just me being the big CW guy that I am I can't stand to see it misrepresented, maybe its because he's a Brit? Or a Bostonian (I think) for that matter (just kdding kind of....) I just personaly think Cornwell should stick to what he writes best - British Historical fiction mainly.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 33
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