Something Close To Genius

Just finished the tenth in the Flashman series and finding myself knocked sideways by the outstanding final segments - essentially the whole sequence on the raid at Harper's Ferry. Exciting, funny, thought-provoking and, most of all, oddly moving. You are made to feel for the deaths of John Brown's 'pet lambs'; indeed, you are made to feel for the entirely, maddeningly, paradoxical Brown himself. Hero and madman. To blame for it all. Even for the dreadful war between North & South?

So strange that I can't recall feeling any of this when I first read the novel some twenty, possibly twenty-five years ago. For some reason I found the later chapters heavy-going then. Perhaps I'm a better reader now? Certainly slower.