Saturday 30 June 2018

The Swedish Army in the Great Northern War 1700-21


I was sent this book by Helion to review which is very kind of them (Thank you Charles). Please don't bar me from reviewing any more books on the basis of this review!

I was looking forward to getting this book as the subject has always been one of great interest to me. The author is a well respected expert on the Swedish army of the period and the book is certainly crammed full of information, some nice maps and some lovely colour illustrations of flags and uniforms.

The book has a few typos and the writing is in places 'clunky'. I understand the subject matter quite well, but at times I was confused!

To get back to the positives the book itself isn't half bad as a broad account of the War and the organisation, uniforms and tactics of the Swedish army. There is some interesting stuff on the development of fortresses in the region and of the critical naval aspects of the war. I would have liked a map of the theatre of operations nearer to the beginning of the book though, and maybe some orders of battle.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review Michael:). I have some other Helion books by Mike Embree and one of them is very, very hard to read due to poor editing, repeated sentences and paragraphs. However there is so much information contained therein, it just about makes up for the above. However they do not make good bedtime reads as you need to be wide awake to keep track of what's going on.

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    1. Ooops, I meant to write Colin, not Michael!

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    2. That’s ok Sam. Once you cut through the dreadful writing there’s some useful stuff but holy moly it’s hard work

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  2. Seems to be a recurring problem with Helion. I skimmed through it yesterday and liked what bits I read. Illustrations are good and I like the maps.

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