With Clive in India: Book Review

With Clive in India, by G.A Henty, first published in 1884, is a novel written in the historical fiction genre. The novel contains many historically accurate details, but with fictional characters. In this spoiler free report I will be reviewing this novel.

 What I will be including in my review is: a basic summary of the novel and the main characters from the novel, what I thought of the novel personally, my favorite details in the story, my least favorite details, and finally would I encourage or discourage my friend from reading the novel.

Novel Summary and the Main Characters

With Clive in India, is a story about a young English man named Charlie Marryat(who has just lost his father), who gets a job from the East India Company. With the company he journeys to the country India, in India he meets a man named Lord Clive(who plays an important role in the story). Charlie soon becomes involved in the fight over the control of India, and is involved in many battles. Along the way he also has many exciting adventures, during his life in India.

The main characters from this novel are, Charlie Marryat, Tim Kelly, Peters, and Hossein. All four characters play important roles throughout the novel, and make the novel unique.

My Personal Opinion and Thoughts on the Novel

The novel itself in my opinion was not the best or worst novel I have ever read, so I personally have a neutral opinion on the novel itself. My rating for this novel is five out of ten. Just because I have a neutral opinion on the novel.

My favorite details from the story are, how Charlie grew as a person, the way the story is very historically accurate and well researched, and the final thing is the way the story revolves around a real historical figure, Lord Clive.

Even though I did have details I liked about the novel there are some details that I dislike. The details I disliked from the novel are, the lack of romance( I am an avid fan of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, so I prefer some romance in a novel), the way the story dragged a little in the middle part of the story, and the final thing that I disliked was the fact there were almost no shocking or surprising plot twists, which made the novel a little predictable. Other than those things the novel was pretty good, and I enjoyed reading it.

Conclusion

With Clive in India, by G.A Henty, is a story about a young man named Charlie Marryatt, who gets a job with the East India company. With the company he moves to India and becomes involved in the struggle for the control over India, and also has many adventures along the way. 

I have a neutral opinion on the novel itself, and I would rate this novel a five out of ten. I did have a few things that I liked about the novel and disliked. But overall this novel is pretty good, and by reading it you will notice that there was a lot of work involved while writing the book, and the author did do a good job writing the novel. 

The final question and the most important: would I discourage or encourage a friend from reading the novel? This depends on my friend. If my friend likes and enjoys reading historical fiction, then yes I would encourage him/her to read this novel. But if my friend does not like historical fiction, then I would not encourage him/her to read the novel. So if you like historical fiction this book would be great for you.

In this book review I reviewed the novel With Clive in India, by G.A Henty. I gave a brief summary of the novel. Then I gave  my personal opinion on the novel, what I liked, disliked, and finally would I recommend this novel to a friend? I answered the question with a yes and no answer because I would only recommend this novel if my friend liked historical fiction. This is my book review on the book With Clive in India.