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.
Reaction to my list of The Top Five Harry Flashman Novels continues to come in, with readers wanting more Flashman reviews. Here’s my take on the novel which would have been in sixth place if I had done a list of my Top Six Harry Flashman Novels.
6. FLASHMAN AND THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT (1990)
Time Period: The First Sikh War (1845-1846)
The Flashman Papers jump around to different periods of Harry Flashman’s life and this novel details our main character’s adventures following the events in Flashman’s Lady, published in 1977. Flashman’s Lady came in 3rd place in my rankings.
NOTE: The Mountain of Light of the novel’s title refers to the Koh-I-Noor (“Mountain of Light”) Diamond, which at the time belonged to the rulers of the Punjab in India and which features prominently in the story.
Synopsis: Queen Victoria’s least trustworthy Cavalry Officer, Harry Paget Flashman, is once again in the thick of things. A series of false starts to an all-out war have set things dangerously on edge in the Punjab, with a potential bloodbath in the offing if one false move is made.
Harry being Harry, he STILL manages to find time for a brief fling with the wife of a fellow British Officer before getting thrust into the line of fire. And into the schemes and political machinations of the real-life Maharani Jeendan, her brother Jawaheer, the British East India Company and a fanatical real-life military sect called the Khalsa.
At the center of this tangled web, lurking like a thing alive, is the Koh-I-Noor Diamond, the Mountain of Light itself, passing from hand to hand – and in some cases navel to navel – while being coveted by nearly every figure in our story. Figures which include two real-life American mercenaries who partially inspired Kipling’s tale of The Man Who Would Be King.
The title and savage action of this Flashman novel certainly put one in mind of H. Rider Haggard’s writings but the story’s account of hedonism and political intrigues at the Punjab royal court in Lahore is more along the lines of Robert Graves’ I, Claudius.
The deliciously decadent Maharani Jeendan is our protagonist’s main bedmate in his latest sword and sex adventure, followed closely by Mangla, the Maharani’s beautiful, calculating slave who had – as history confirms – engineered events to secretly become one of the wealthiest women of the Punjab despite her condition of servitude. Continue reading
OKAY- TECH PROBLEMS SOLVED SO LET’S TAKE THIS BLOG POST FROM THE TOP –
THE AVENGERS Volume One, Number 89 (June 1971) 
As assorted tech issues remain here at Balladeer’s Blog I can at least post these links to EVERY part detailing the Celestial Madonna Saga. It presented the Avengers – Mantis included – taking on Loki, Dormammu, Zodiac, Thanos, Lion God, the Troglodytes, the Star Stalker, the Defenders, the Collector, Ultron, Nuklo, Klaw, Solarr, Maximus the Mad, Omega, Necrodamus, KANG the Conqueror, Macrobots, the Titanic Three, the Legion of the Unliving and Immortus! Enjoy til things are operating properly again.
II. MANTIS 2: NIGHT OF THE SWORDSMAN – Mantis and her romantic partner the Swordsman show up at Avengers Mansion and wind up helping the superteam against one of their old foes. CLICK 
XVI. MANTIS 16: THE THANOS WAR CONCLUDES – Mantis plays a crucial role in defeating the cosmically powerful Thanos. Meanwhile parallels between Mantis and Moon Dragon come to the surface. CLICK 
THE HAMPDENSHIRE WONDER (1911) – Written by J.D. Berresford. The story centers around Victor Stott, the remarkable son of Cricket star Ginger Stott. A news reporter who is on friendly terms with Ginger Stott meets his one year old child Victor during a train trip. 
FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH (1907) – Written by Thomas William Lawson, a writer and stock manipulator who made a fortune from shady stock deals … in between advocating for cleaning up Wall Street to shut down those fleece jobs. The reforms Lawson campaigned for were taken up decades later when Franklin Roosevelt appointed future Supreme Court Justice William O Douglas to head the Securities Exchange Commission. 
Jim Randolph, one of the novel’s main characters, is in the T.R. mold: he may be a bloated rich pig but at least he’s a bloated rich pig with a sense of noblesse oblige. Jim shares Teddy Roosevelt’s disdain for the Trusts and for con men who use the stock market to rip off their clients. 
WITHIN AN ACE OF THE END OF THE WORLD (1900) – Written by Robert Barr. No doubt about it, Barr was obsessed with the notion of humanity possibly bringing on its own demise through ill-considered scientific tampering. Recently Balladeer’s Blog reviewed another of his stories, The Doom of London, which mined the same creative territory. 
Recently Balladeer’s Blog completed its examination of Don McGregor’s 1973-1975 Black Panther story Panther’s Rage. I’m no comic book expert but in my opinion Panther’s Rage surpasses much of the work done by the overrated and overpraised Alan Moore. 
FOR PART ONE CLICK 
Hidden in the jungle Madame Slay plots revenge killings on behalf of the late Killmonger and plans to slay the Black Panther himself. 
FOR PART ONE CLICK 
Erik has committed all of his remaining troops to this assault, with many of his soldiers serving as Mounted Regiments riding into battle atop the dozens of dinosaurs that Killmonger and his men rounded up in prehistoric Serpent Valley recently. 
FOR PART ONE CLICK 
Our main character and Monica are frolicking on a beach at Twisted Visions Lake. They are swimming, riding giant trained turtles and having fun like consenting adults will have. Author Don McGregor has the two lovers exchange the kind of reasonably romantic dialogue that he would later have Sabre and Melissa Siren regularly spout to each other in his post-apocalyptic series titled Sabre. 
Venomm at last reveals how he – a white (but horribly disfigured) man from America – was brought to Wakanda by Killmonger. He talks about how N’Jadaka/ Killmonger had already recruited him as a follower years ago, even before he (Killmonger) gained an audience with the Black Panther at Avengers Mansion in New York City. 
