"Stylistically, the third volume is consistent with the first two in the trilogy. Broers deploys crisp commentary on a series of clear events; goes into detail without fussiness or gratuitousness to describe skirmishes and battles; relies (often too many times) on a series of repeated phrases to make the same point (for example, ‘he lied like a bulletin’, to describe Napoleon’s falsehoods); and he is not afraid to call Napoleon a genius, even if he then explains the terms by which this is to be understood.
"Napoleon: the decline and fall of an empire is detailed, exact, and rational – filled with events and words that can be measured – while lacking a capacity to capture murkier intentions and speculations, dreams and nightmares, the mysticism of Alexander I just as much as the Jacobin passions and Romantic self-fashioning of Napoleon."