Seventeen-year-old James Carey, son of Richard Carey, the 8th Earl of Aubigny, and a Cornet in D Troop of the 30th Light Dragoons, experiences the lead-up to the famous Battle of Waterloo in this historical novella from British children's author Ronald Welch. Briefly taken prisoner, James falls in for a time with Wellington's spymaster, Colonel Colquhoun Grant,, before joining his father on Wellington's staff. Observing the fighting at Quatre Bras, he retreats, along with the rest of the British army, to a little village called Waterloo...

Published posthumously in 2018, The Road to Waterloo is a brief four chapters, and was found in Ronald Welch's papers thirty years after his death. It was obviously intended as the start of a longer novel, one which describes the famous battle in the title. It's regrettable that Welch didn't manage to finish the book, as I think his depiction of that battle would have been top notch, and an interesting counterpart to Georgette Heyer's depiction, in her An Infamous Army, which is considered one of the best descriptions of Waterloo ever written. That being said, the four chapters here also work as a separate, stand-alone story, albeit a brief one, and the conclusion right before Waterloo closes the narrative on an intriguing note. I found James an appealing character, and was interested to see his interaction with his father, whose own youthful adventure was chronicled in Escape from France. Recommended to readers who have read and enjoyed earlier entries in the Carey Family Chronicles, as well as to young readers who enjoy historical fiction in general. ( )

A worthy, though short, addition to the Carey novels, The Road to Waterloo was left unpublished at its author's death. While it is an excellent story and fills a sizeable hole in the sequence of Carey novels, it is less than half the length of any other book in the series. Like its predecessor in reading order, Captain of Foot>, The Road to Waterloo focuses on episodes from the Napoleonic wars, eschewing the usual backstory and throwing the reader straight into the campaign. Richard Carey makes a welcome return from the previous two books, and we are introduced to his son James, who will return in the next novel. As the book ends with the British arriving at Waterloo, the reader is left wondering whether a further episode would have rounded out the volume. Highly recommended, with a caveat only regarding the length. ( )