Warlord’s Gold
This is the fifth book in Michael Arnold’s Civil War Chronicles, following the career of Captain Stryker, mercenary soldier in the service of the King in the English Civil War. The series began with the outbreak of war in 1641, and in Warlord’s Gold we have reached 1643 and the war is beginning to turn against the Royalists. As with the earlier books, Arnold’s best passages are the descriptions of actual battles, in this case the siege of Basing House in Hampshire. This was a Royalist victory against the odds, so unlike the siege of Gloucester in the previous book Stryker and his comrades are on the winning side. This can’t go on much longer! The purely fictional parts of the story, set in the Scilly Isles, are a little too far-fetched, and the love interest is not very interesting. But if you want to get the feel of the Civil War from a soldier’s viewpoint, the Stryker series cannot be bettered.