For Balladeer’s Blog’s Number One Harry Flashman Novel click HERE . For background info on George MacDonald Fraser’s infamous anti-hero Harry Paget Flashman you can also click that link.
5. FLASHMAN ON THE MARCH (2005)
Time Period: The 1867-1868 Abyssinian military campaign and rescue mission.
This volume of The Flashman Papers is set right after Harry’s unsuccessful attempt to spirit away Mexico’s overthrown Emperor Maximilian before he could be executed. (Well it wasn’t Flashman’s fault. As history tells us, Maximilian DID refuse to escape with the conspirators who busted in to save his sorry butt.)
Synopsis: After a passionate farewell kiss from (the real-life) Princess Agnes Salm-Salm, Harry Flashman further raises the ire of his Austrian escorts by seducing a young, blonde and buxom Hapsburg aristocrat on the trans-Atlantic voyage with Maximilian’s coffin.
In Trieste, with the Austrians planning to unleash their wrath on Flashman as soon as the ceremony for Maximilian is over, our main character bolts for the British consulate. HMG is happy to have Sir Harry on hand and entrusts him to escort the notorious 100,000 Maria Theresa Thalers being sent to finance General Robert Napier’s upcoming Abyssinian Expedition.
That expedition is being launched to free British captives being held and tortured by the (historically) unhinged Emperor Theodore II of Abyssinia (Called Ethiopia today).
Before Colonel Flashman knows it he’s caught up in a clash with Muslim slavers on the Red Sea, then breezing right along to the Eritrean port of Zula, embarkation point for the British campaign into Abyssinia.
The author George MacDonald Fraser’s descriptive talents were in top form in Flashman on the March. As fans well know, Fraser creates scenes in the reader’s mind that surpass the biggest-budgeted cinematic blockbusters.
This particular tale lets him fully unleash his genius for seeming to take his audience to faraway planets while never leaving the Earth. Abyssinia/ Ethiopia feels menacingly alien and its hostile terrain might as well be on an orbiting asteroid as we get dragged into deadly danger with the reluctant Flashman.
Harry and his Royal Marine escorts eventually catch up with General Napier far inland, and even though our protagonist officially turns over the shipment of Thalers he is still at Napier’s mercy in terms of papers and transit orders home to England.
With the British forces – complete with 44 war elephants from India – moving more slowly than anticipated, Napier decides to send Flashman on ahead of the main army.
Harry’s orders: a) to covertly keep tabs on the location of the hostages in case the Emperor decides to take them even further inland and b) to feel out Theodore’s many enemies in the war-torn country and try to recruit ad hoc allies to prevent the Emperor’s army from escaping.
Flashman’s guide, translator and fellow warrior will be the beautiful Ethiopian woman Uliba-Wark, half-sister to the country’s Queen. Uliba-Wark has a small domain of her own and is up to her neck in Abyssinia’s countless political and sexual intrigues & rivalries.
A running battle on horseback which leaves Harry and the warlike beauty as the sole survivors enroute to her castle is just a hint of the wild bed and battle action that lays ahead. Continue reading
FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958)
EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956) 
THEY SAVED HITLER’S BRAIN (1963/ 1968) 
President’s Day is coming up in 11 days so here’s yet another seasonal post. It’s one of my random takes on one of our Presidents. Or in this case just one aspect of one of our Presidents. More will be coming, some positive and some negative, including my close personal friend Barack Obama. 
As everyone knows, one of the main points of playing a sport at a 2-year college is to get prepped to sign with a 4 year college. Maybe your grades or certain mechanics of the game could use some adjusting, but after your 2 year stay it is huge to get signed by a 4-year college team. 
4. FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON (1985) 
Or at least that’s what she TELLS him is being smuggled. It turns out instead to be an arms shipment for the Taipingi rebels who have split China into a blood-soaked Civil War for the past decade. Flashman doesn’t realize the true nature of the contraband he’s transporting until he’s forced to fight off a band of Macao pirates. 
AARON BURR
NJCAA (National Junior College Athletic Association) – 1. INDIAN HILLS COLLEGE WARRIORS ### 2. NORTHWESTERN FLORIDA STATE RAIDERS ### 3. VINCENNES UNIVERSITY TRAILBLAZERS ### 4. MOTLOW STATE BUCKS ### 5. FLORIDA SOUTHWESTERN STATE BUCCANEERS ### 
6. ODESSA COLLEGE WRANGLERS ### 7. GILLETTE COLLEGE PRONGHORNS ### 8. HUTCHINSON COLLEGE BLUE DRAGONS ### 9. MOBERLY AREA COLLEGE GREYHOUNDS ### 10. OTERO COLLEGE RATTLERS ### 
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