The classic foreign legion tale remains a lot of fun to read if you can put aside some of the florid prose, stock standard racist description of Arabs and non-Anglo Europeans, and really vicious anti-Semitic episode where John Geste sells some good to a Jewish pawnbroker in London (really, why is in there?). There's also a surprisingly long epilogue about the adventures of John and Digby Geste, plus Hank and Buddy - who take over a year to get home and go through such complicated troubles. The whole time I kept thinking "why didn't you just hand yourself in at the fort? Come up with a cover story and be a hero?"
The structure of the novel revolves around some key mysteries: how did the bodies come to be guarding the fort? what happened at the fort? what happened to the Blue Water? how should the Gestes react to the proposed mutiny? Wren likes to have his characters sit around and analyse things from different points of view and offer up different hypothesis - he seems more reluctant to describe actual action. Which is a shame because when he does eg the Arab attack at the end - it's exciting.
There's plenty of action and adventure, I struggled to tell the three Geste brothers apart (or what made Beau so special - he doesn't do anything super heroic or even take out more Arabs or act as a leader... actually come to think of it he and his brothers really are idiots), the villainous sergeant was terrific, the descriptions of life in the legion felt accurate.
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