But on the front between Napoleon's advancing army and the forces of Tsar Alexander of Russia, everyone carries a gun. Lucas's experience as a lawman isn't useful here, where the only crimes are on such a grand scale that they're beyond human understanding. When it's not just one dead, or ten, but a hundred thousand. When families are torn asunder by forces both within and without.

And those are the forces Lucas encounters here. Between the death and the intrigue, between the petty actions of famous men and the selfless actions of unknown heroes, between the romance and the reality, there has to be a meaning. And Lucas is determined to find out what it is.

With the kind of writing that may leave one despairing at the relative helplessness of humanity in the face of forces too vast to comprehend, it's no wonder The Moscow Times says, "This bleak, relentless, and still awe-inspiring tour de force might have been written in half the space, but that would have made it shorter."