Book Review: The Horns of the Buffalo by John Wilcox

If you love reading and you haven’t started using Goodreads, you’re missing out. The best thing about the website is that by logging the books you’ve read, a heap of recommendations of similar stories and themes appears on your page. It’s a great way to find new books to read, and it’s how I found The Horns of the Buffalo, a great story set around the Anglo-Zulu War in the late 1870s, and named for the formation that the Zulu favour in battle.

John Wilcox’s first novel to feature the characters of Simon Fonthill, a lieutenant in the 24^th Regiment of Foot in the British Army and his servant/companion Private Cyril ‘352’ Jenkins, is a great one! There’s plenty of Bernard Cornwell’s great Richard Sharpe in Fonthill, who never seems to be far from trouble or controversy.

After lapsing into a coma and missing his regiment’s posting overseas, Fonthill’s adversary, Colonel Covington, brands the young lieutenant a coward, and it is hinted that Fonthill’s father, though a decorated officer, might have been the same. After being released from hospital with a clean bill of health, and with 352 Jenkins – he is known by the last three numbers of his Army enlistment number because there are so many Welshman named Jenkins in the regiment – who has just been released from prison for striking a superior, he is dispatched to Africa, where an ambitious governor Sir Henry Bartle Frere is looking for any excuse to invade and conquer some more land for Queen Victoria’s empire.

Fonthill and 352 Jenkins are tasked with going deep into Zululand, and making contact with a British native who has fallen in with the Zulu, and asking for his help in discerning information about the Zulu forces. It’s clear that their quarry, John Dunn, is a conflicted man, for he has somewhat fallen in love with life in Zululand – he has a number of wives and children as a testament to that – but also recognises his duty to the British Empire. It’s a fascinating to-and-fro for Dunn throughout.

Fonthill and 352 Jenkins set about getting the information they need and getting it back to the British. As you might expect, it’s not nearly as easy as that. Throughout their trials, Fonthill and 352 Jenkins go from a relationship between an officer and his servant to one of friends and comrades in arms.

The Horns of the Buffalo is one of those classic adventures that whisk you quickly from one narrow scrape to the next, whilst painting enough of a broad picture of military tactics and government policies of the day. Fonthill’s time with the Zulu is fascinating, simply because all I knew about that race, other than having their country unjustly invaded by the British, was their decisive victory at Isandlwana and their defeat at the hands of a small garrison of redcoats at Rorke’s Drift soon after. It’s a nice window into a race who will forever be remembered for inflicting one of the worst defeats in British Army history.

The other storyline throughout is of Fonthill’s childhood friend, Alice Griffith, who is a remarkably independent and headstrong woman in an age where women were mostly far from that. She ends up becoming a journalist, sent to cover the war in South Africa, and is incredibly well written by Wilcox. In a male-dominated world, Alice really stands out as more than just the old damsel in distress.

Fonthill survives the bloodbath at Isandlwana and manages to – yep, you guessed it – find his way to Rorke’s Drift, and plays a role in that battle, alongside famous soldiers John Chard and Gonville Bromhead, before another run-in with Colonel Covington, and the enmity between the two men comes to a head in the aftermath of the successful defence of Rorke’s Drift, the backdrop being a more aggressive foray into Zululand.

Whilst the battle scenes aren’t as incredibly detailed as I’m used to in Bernard Cornwell’s works, Wilcox does a good job bringing the horror of those two battles to life. Of course, Cornwell is a master of the art, so perhaps I’m asking too much?

Regardless, Fonthill’s debut is an excellent one, and I was glad to discover that there are another nine books published in this series, with a tenth slated for this year. I can’t wait to see what Fonthill and Jenkins get up to next!