Copperhead
Written by Bernard Cornwell
Narrated by David Rintoul
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
The second book in Bernard Cornwell’s bestselling series on the American Civil War.
Nathanial Starbuck is a Copperhead: a northerner fighting for the rebel South in America’s Civil War.
Expelled from the Faulconer Legion, Starbuck must travel a hard road before he can rejoin his comrades. He must join the shadowy war of betrayal and espionage, where nothing is certain and no one can be trusted. Starbuck’s journey will take him through the savage prisons of Richmond, across the blood-sodden battlefields of Virginia, and into the deadly high command of the northern army.
Bernard Cornwell
BERNARD CORNWELL is the author of over fifty novels, including the acclaimed New York Times bestselling Saxon Tales, which serve as the basis for the hit Netflix series The Last Kingdom. He lives with his wife on Cape Cod and in Charleston, South Carolina.
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Reviews for Copperhead
112 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5It’s a great story. But the sound quality is awful. It was like listening to a radio that isn’t properly tuned. Unfortunately I had to stop.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My favorite in the Starbuck Chronicles, the characters are complex and are forced to make difficult decisions. This complexity occurs within both the Union and the Confederacy, and causes the reader to question what they would do in similar circumstances.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Copperhead is the second in the Starbuck series, and the best of the three that I have read (only the fourth remains to be devoured). It's perhaps the most thoughtful, as both Nate and his friend Adam are forced to confront their reasons for fighting the war.
Adam, Washington Faulconer's son and good Virginian, now a major, is so distraught by what he feels is an unjust war, that he decides to feed important information about rebel positions to the Yankees. Nate, the Bostonian, discovers that his true métier is soldiering and that the friends he has made in Faulconer's Company K — not to mention the lithe Sally Truslow — are more important to him than the allegiances of his vigorously antislavery father and brother, James, who is now on Allen Pinkerton's staff. This means, of course, that all the paths will somewhat improbably cross, but first Nate finds himself in serious jeopardy. Washington Faulconer had seen him murder one of Faulconer's other officers during battle, an episode recounted in the first volume, and despite the official verdict that the man had been killed by a Yankee shell, Faulconer is determined to see Nate punished. Nate is arrested as a spy, and is interrogated using a horrible purgative torture, but then, his innocence, recognized, is coerced into running a mission for the Confederates. McClellan's timidity in 1862 is accurately portrayed, although Pinkerton's caution and his unwillingness to credit information contrary to his judgment that the South had huge numbers of men facing McClellan, is a bit farcical.
Cornwell makes it clear that McClellan missed an important opportunity to end the war early. He could easily have beaten the small numbers of Southern forces outside Richmond but for his timidity. There's a revealing scene where McClellan and his officers survey a recently vacated Southern defensive position only to discover the artillery pieces they had been counting from afar were all "Quaker" guns, i.e., tree trunks painted black and mounted to look like real artillery guns.
McClellan is so anxious to believe the fakes had been placed there just the night before, and his officers so obsequious, that despite a French observer’s pointed comments and evidence to the contrary, they all leave selfconvinced the enemy is even stronger than they had imagined. Several battles are accurately portrayed, including Ball's Bluff and Gaines Mill, as the Northern army ponderously moved on Richmond.
Cornwell has an uncanny talent for taking the reader directly into the very realistic scenes. No one reading his battle scenes could ever feel any nostalgia for that kind of carnage. Several prominent historical figures have been added, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, the later Supreme Court justice who was severely wounded early in the war. Note that most of Cornwell is available in audio book form. I must recommend the Tom Parker rendition over David Case, a.k.a Frederick Davidson. Case's somewhat effete English accent just doesn't portray Southern accents very well. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Even though Bernard Cornwell is one of my favorite authors I did not greatly enjoy his first Nathaniel Starbuck book “Rebel.” And it was with immense trepidation that I picked up “Copperhead” book two in the Nathaniel Starbuck chronicles but I was happy I did. Whereas the first book seemed blasé and nonchalant in book two Mr. Cornwell takes Nathaniel through dazzling adventures consorting with cruel torture, betrayal, whores, espionage and of course deadly and bloody battle. Wisps of Sharpe and prevalent throughout –more so than I thought possible- however Nathaniel has a panache and roguish character all his own.