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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
3.5. This was my first sharpe book. My brother read all of them and watched all of the movies. He’s super into Napoleonic era military history, so this was right up his alley. For me, even though that stuff doesn’t fascinate me all that much, this was still a fun read, and I enjoyed it, even if I couldn’t fully appreciate all the nuances relating to the battles and the history and the uniforms and tactics and such. Cornwell’s prose is absolutely gorgeous and really paints the picture in an interesting way, and keeps a story like this from getting dry. The prose really pulls you into the world of the book.
My only drawbacks are a couple of minor issues. One being that the action scenes were very long and plodding for my personal taste, kind of taking the urgency out of the scene. The second being that this took a little longer to read than I’d expected. I’m not entirely sure why that was. Even if I was engrossed for 2 hours, I’d come out realizing I hadn’t made it as far as I thought. Outside of that, no real complaints. The characters were solid, and I liked sharpe, even trying to picture him as Sean bean rather than how he is explained on page.
I definitely want to explore the rest of the series. Either beginning in publication order (w/Sharpe’s Eagle) or in chronological order (w/Sharpe’s Tiger). I’m told you can’t go wrong with either
My only drawbacks are a couple of minor issues. One being that the action scenes were very long and plodding for my personal taste, kind of taking the urgency out of the scene. The second being that this took a little longer to read than I’d expected. I’m not entirely sure why that was. Even if I was engrossed for 2 hours, I’d come out realizing I hadn’t made it as far as I thought. Outside of that, no real complaints. The characters were solid, and I liked sharpe, even trying to picture him as Sean bean rather than how he is explained on page.
I definitely want to explore the rest of the series. Either beginning in publication order (w/Sharpe’s Eagle) or in chronological order (w/Sharpe’s Tiger). I’m told you can’t go wrong with either
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Cut off from a British army in retreat and harried by French Dragoons, Lieutenant Richard Sharpe finds himself in northern Spain with a motley crew of soldiers, the remnants of various routed Rifles companies and no other officer in sight. Bitter Sharpe, struggling to fit into the Rifles regiment as a penniless Lieutenant promoted from the ranks must finally learn to really lead and hopefully gain the respect of men who know full well he isn't a proper officer and who would sooner be away following their own plans.
It's a really good book full of character development for Sharpe who starts out far too harsh on his men, always acting the bullying Sergeant and rarely giving an inch. As he crosses paths with the Spaniard Major Blas Vivar and becomes embroiled in a scheme to retake an occupied Spanish town from the French he begins to learn the craft of inspiring men.
To do so he must first win round Harper, the clear core of the group and heart of the men, who is a man with a chip on his shoulder when it comes to wearing Sergeant's stripes and doing an officers bidding. Harper is a wonderful character and anytime he's around Sharpe the book really shines as the two butt heads frequently what with Harper being a similar soldier to who Sharpe was before he got his step. Minus the bloody minded ambition of Sharpe though.
The weaknesses really come from the thinly drawn female characters, of which there aren't many full stop, with the grating battleaxe Mrs Parker and her adventurous niece Louisa searching for her place in the world. Louisa could have been a really interesting character and she does show glimmers here and there throughout as she shows her bravery and boldness but her plot meanders and feels a little too limp ultimately.
Sharpe's Rifles is packed with a variety of action from barefist brawls with recalcitrant Riflemen to full on skirmishes and battles with the notorious French Dragoons through the Spanish hills. Cornwell really excels at these battle scenes, ensuring all of these moments are detailed, vivid, and gripping.
It's a really good book full of character development for Sharpe who starts out far too harsh on his men, always acting the bullying Sergeant and rarely giving an inch. As he crosses paths with the Spaniard Major Blas Vivar and becomes embroiled in a scheme to retake an occupied Spanish town from the French he begins to learn the craft of inspiring men.
To do so he must first win round Harper, the clear core of the group and heart of the men, who is a man with a chip on his shoulder when it comes to wearing Sergeant's stripes and doing an officers bidding. Harper is a wonderful character and anytime he's around Sharpe the book really shines as the two butt heads frequently what with Harper being a similar soldier to who Sharpe was before he got his step. Minus the bloody minded ambition of Sharpe though.
The weaknesses really come from the thinly drawn female characters, of which there aren't many full stop, with the grating battleaxe Mrs Parker and her adventurous niece Louisa searching for her place in the world. Louisa could have been a really interesting character and she does show glimmers here and there throughout as she shows her bravery and boldness but her plot meanders and feels a little too limp ultimately.
Sharpe's Rifles is packed with a variety of action from barefist brawls with recalcitrant Riflemen to full on skirmishes and battles with the notorious French Dragoons through the Spanish hills. Cornwell really excels at these battle scenes, ensuring all of these moments are detailed, vivid, and gripping.
adventurous
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Most of the 4 stars is nostalgia, as I loved this series when I first discovered it and this was the first one I read. I'm sure there were flaws, but the idea of realistic history based adventure was such a revelation at the time.
I really loved the first five Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell -- reading them chronologically, up to Sharpe's Copenhagen or whatever. I'm glad I did, because I think this one is pretty mediocre, comparatively. Maybe I just don't really give a damn about the Napoleonic Wars right now. Given the world-building Cornwell did in Sharpe's Rifles (and presumably beyond), the whole first five books really shouldn't exist, I guess. They're pulpy and improbable, to the point of, at times, being silly. They still felt more realistic and interesting than this one, I guess, maybe because the details of combat in that era felt much more realistic to me. I have no idea if it's actually realistic, having been deprived by time and space of the privilege of serving with the British Army in Colonial India and almost getting eaten by a tiger and, you know, fighting at Trafalgar and all that.
But the pulp first five books certainly seemed more exciting than "Rifles," or the TV series, which I found vaguely annoying from the first strain of studio-musician warbling metal guitar on the soundtrack.
I guess what I'm saying is that there's a vividness about the first five books that helps me completely eschew real life and sink into the vivid recollection of a fake history a la James Clavell's Shogun. However improbable the India, Trafalgar and Copenhagen segments might be, I felt like I was there. What's more, I went out of my way to read the historical background of those sequences, because they were pretty damned interesting.
Here, it was all I could do to read the actual book. Maybe I'll skip ahead in the series, or re-read "Beat to Quarters" again.
But the pulp first five books certainly seemed more exciting than "Rifles," or the TV series, which I found vaguely annoying from the first strain of studio-musician warbling metal guitar on the soundtrack.
I guess what I'm saying is that there's a vividness about the first five books that helps me completely eschew real life and sink into the vivid recollection of a fake history a la James Clavell's Shogun. However improbable the India, Trafalgar and Copenhagen segments might be, I felt like I was there. What's more, I went out of my way to read the historical background of those sequences, because they were pretty damned interesting.
Here, it was all I could do to read the actual book. Maybe I'll skip ahead in the series, or re-read "Beat to Quarters" again.
Cornwell, Bernard. Sharpe’s Rifles. 1988. Sharpe No.6. Penguin, 2001.
This is the first book I read in the Sharpe series, and it is the one that got me hooked on Cornwell. Rereading it after many years, I find I like it as much as I did the first time through and am perhaps more conscious of what Cornwell has to say about class distinction in the British military and in British culture generally. It also reminds us what a multinational event the Napoleonic wars were—in this case, we learn how thoroughly the war devastated Spain. Good historical novels like this one make you history in a way that schoolbooks seldom manage.
This is the first book I read in the Sharpe series, and it is the one that got me hooked on Cornwell. Rereading it after many years, I find I like it as much as I did the first time through and am perhaps more conscious of what Cornwell has to say about class distinction in the British military and in British culture generally. It also reminds us what a multinational event the Napoleonic wars were—in this case, we learn how thoroughly the war devastated Spain. Good historical novels like this one make you history in a way that schoolbooks seldom manage.
"He might not be a born officer, but by God he was a born soldier. He was the son of a whore, bereft of God, but a God-damned soldier."
I've decided that the best way to approach the Sharpe series -- in which the publication order differs so radically from the publication order as to seem all but an exercise in randomization -- the way one does when reading stories about Conan the Cimmerian. There might be some narrative carry-over from novel to novel, but it's best to just regard them as discrete stories that happen to be about a guy with the same name and more or less the same character.
I say this because Sharpe's Rifles is the point where a lot of people who have chosen to read these books in chronological order start complaining about inconsistencies. The book was written some half a dozen years after those of the original core series, but cast as a prequel to them -- and the books I've read so far were written many, many years after this one, but take place earlier in Sharpe's career.
So in a lot of ways, the Richard Sharpe in Sharpe's Rifles bears little resemblance to the character I've grown to love through his adventures in India, at sea, and in Denmark, except in the ways described in the ur-Cornwellian sentence I quoted at the beginning of this post. He's still pretty uncouth and brutal, still an all but conscience-less and cold-blooded killer, but he seems only to have honed those qualities from his prior adventures* but not to have experienced the character building that came with them. To wit: he is unsure in his authority (though it could be argued that the years he has spent as a downtrodden Quartermaster for the 95th Rifles might have eroded the confidence he gained in India and Denmark), a complete sucker for anything in a skirt (see my asterisk below) and taking lessons in leadership from the Spanish major Bias Vivar that he really ought already to have absorbed from the good examples of his protectors in India like McCandless.
But these are small quibbles, and become meaningless once one has agreed to treat the novels as things outside of time and narrative continuity. Especially when the material at hand is so good, as it is here. For Sharpe's Rifles has everything I've come to expect from a Sharpe story: over-the-top adventure (here a ragtag band of survivors of a famous retreat across Spain is teaming up with a small-but-elite cadre of the Spanish army commanded by the aforementioned Don Bias on a mission to bring a Holy McGuffin to the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostella and thus create a new legend to inspire the Spanish peasantry to rise up against the hated French invaders), internecine bickering, inspired combat tactics, cold chivalry among enemies, and all the fighting, drinking and swearing (if not, this time, the whoring) one might expect from a good piece of military fiction.
Here, too, is an origin story of sorts, though its significance is lost to chronological readers who have not osmotically absorbed a certain level of meta-knowledge about the series -- for it is here that Sharpe and his gonna-be best friend, Sergeant Harper, meet for the first time. And it's a pretty good meet as those go -- Harper almost stages a mutiny against Sharpe! -- but it's still not as good as Aubrey and Maturin and the concert at Port Mahon. But that's maybe not a fair comparison, right? I'm sure back in the 1980s when only the original core Peninsular War books existed, fans of Sharpe/Harper were delighted to observe this meeting, but for us chronological readers starting in the 21st century, it will never have the same power.
Still, cracking good stuff. Again, lots of explorations of how the rifle changed warfare, and how swords still matter, even if one sword is in the hand of a guy astride a big horse and the other in the hand of a guy on foot who ran out of ammo or out of time to reload his weapon, lots of amusing ruses de guerre... and then there's the attack on Santiago itself, which doesn't hold a candle to the big set-piece battles we saw in India, but is still very satisfying indeed.
Truly, Sharpe never disappoints.
*At least, thank goodness, his prior adventures don't involve a lot of ret-conning; the allusions to his deeds in India, at Seringapatam and Gawalghur, etc. match up with the stories I've read. Well, except for Lady Grace, his lover from Sharpe's Waterloo who died after giving him a son before Sharpe's Prey. I'm pretty sure that once you've bedded a gorgeous noblewoman you're not going to be so terribly overawed by a mere member of the impecunious country gentry, however mischievous and cute.
I've decided that the best way to approach the Sharpe series -- in which the publication order differs so radically from the publication order as to seem all but an exercise in randomization -- the way one does when reading stories about Conan the Cimmerian. There might be some narrative carry-over from novel to novel, but it's best to just regard them as discrete stories that happen to be about a guy with the same name and more or less the same character.
I say this because Sharpe's Rifles is the point where a lot of people who have chosen to read these books in chronological order start complaining about inconsistencies. The book was written some half a dozen years after those of the original core series, but cast as a prequel to them -- and the books I've read so far were written many, many years after this one, but take place earlier in Sharpe's career.
So in a lot of ways, the Richard Sharpe in Sharpe's Rifles bears little resemblance to the character I've grown to love through his adventures in India, at sea, and in Denmark, except in the ways described in the ur-Cornwellian sentence I quoted at the beginning of this post. He's still pretty uncouth and brutal, still an all but conscience-less and cold-blooded killer, but he seems only to have honed those qualities from his prior adventures* but not to have experienced the character building that came with them. To wit: he is unsure in his authority (though it could be argued that the years he has spent as a downtrodden Quartermaster for the 95th Rifles might have eroded the confidence he gained in India and Denmark), a complete sucker for anything in a skirt (see my asterisk below) and taking lessons in leadership from the Spanish major Bias Vivar that he really ought already to have absorbed from the good examples of his protectors in India like McCandless.
But these are small quibbles, and become meaningless once one has agreed to treat the novels as things outside of time and narrative continuity. Especially when the material at hand is so good, as it is here. For Sharpe's Rifles has everything I've come to expect from a Sharpe story: over-the-top adventure (here a ragtag band of survivors of a famous retreat across Spain is teaming up with a small-but-elite cadre of the Spanish army commanded by the aforementioned Don Bias on a mission to bring a Holy McGuffin to the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostella and thus create a new legend to inspire the Spanish peasantry to rise up against the hated French invaders), internecine bickering, inspired combat tactics, cold chivalry among enemies, and all the fighting, drinking and swearing (if not, this time, the whoring) one might expect from a good piece of military fiction.
Here, too, is an origin story of sorts, though its significance is lost to chronological readers who have not osmotically absorbed a certain level of meta-knowledge about the series -- for it is here that Sharpe and his gonna-be best friend, Sergeant Harper, meet for the first time. And it's a pretty good meet as those go -- Harper almost stages a mutiny against Sharpe! -- but it's still not as good as Aubrey and Maturin and the concert at Port Mahon. But that's maybe not a fair comparison, right? I'm sure back in the 1980s when only the original core Peninsular War books existed, fans of Sharpe/Harper were delighted to observe this meeting, but for us chronological readers starting in the 21st century, it will never have the same power.
Still, cracking good stuff. Again, lots of explorations of how the rifle changed warfare, and how swords still matter, even if one sword is in the hand of a guy astride a big horse and the other in the hand of a guy on foot who ran out of ammo or out of time to reload his weapon, lots of amusing ruses de guerre... and then there's the attack on Santiago itself, which doesn't hold a candle to the big set-piece battles we saw in India, but is still very satisfying indeed.
Truly, Sharpe never disappoints.
*At least, thank goodness, his prior adventures don't involve a lot of ret-conning; the allusions to his deeds in India, at Seringapatam and Gawalghur, etc. match up with the stories I've read. Well, except for Lady Grace, his lover from Sharpe's Waterloo who died after giving him a son before Sharpe's Prey. I'm pretty sure that once you've bedded a gorgeous noblewoman you're not going to be so terribly overawed by a mere member of the impecunious country gentry, however mischievous and cute.
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Gun violence, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual violence, Violence, Religious bigotry
Great adventure. Great hero. The beginning of one of the best HF series.