spencerfantastic 's review for:

Sharpe's Rifles by Bernard Cornwell

1.5

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This book is the second worst book in the series so far (the worst absolutely being Tafalgar). It reads as if it were written by someone who had heard about Richard Sharpe but hasn't actually read any of the books. Sharpe's personality feels completely different (which may be because he's leading his own group of soldiers now, which is disappointing because he always shines in the books where he's on his own) and he frequently says things that do not make canonical sense. For example, Sharpe talks about how a rich woman would 'never love' him because his mother was a prostitute, completely ignoring that Sharpe spent the entirety of the last book lamenting over the death of his rich baby mama, Grace. Also every other woman who has ever appeared in these books have always had a level of high social standing, so for Sharpe to say this is completely ridiculous. He also talks about things like fighting in Portugal, which hasn't even happened yet. That's the next book. I know these were written out of order, but it makes it feel as if the author doesn't care and can't be bothered to make sure there's continuity in the series. Like does he not have any beta readers to point things like this out? It feels so lazy to not keep track of something this simple.

I could not care about Louisa at all seeing as I know she's not going to stick around (and the age gap is a solid ten years. Yuck). Every woman in every book only exists as a romantic conquest for Sharpe, just to immediately disappear so Sharpe can move on to the next romantic conquest. It's incredibly lame, boring, and misogynistic. 

The plot is so flat. The book opens by telling the reader what exactly is in this box that we see later and who a character is very mysterious about. However, since we already know what's in the box, it removes all suspense and just makes the entire conflict boring. I also had no idea why we were here or what we were really fighting about. We're just somewhere and we're battling people.

I used to have a lot of hope for this series, but as I continue on in it, it becomes lamer and lamer. I'm not going to continue on because the books are so formulaic, which makes every book predictable and a yawn-fest. Can't believe that there's 25 books in this series. How many times can someone write the same exact story over and over again?