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nghia 's review for:
Sharpe's Rifles
by Bernard Cornwell
When you see one of these popular quasi-trashy series that have a million books written in non-chronological order I think you're always bound to be somewhat disappointed when you tackle them. Do you go in order of publication? That's what makes the most sense, I think. Yet Cornwell himself says to read them in chronological order. Not that his viewpoint has any special merit, all he did is write them and authors are far from the best judge of their works.
Over the years a number of people have asked this same question of the Sharpe books and my googling turned up several answers. The one I ended up going with was, "Read them in chronological order but skip straight to the Peninsular War stuff with Sharpe's Rifles."
I liked Sharpe's Rifles but I have a feeling that many of those warm fuzzy feelings are due to the novelty of the setting rather than much intrinsic merit. Since I've not read any of the other Sharpe books I don't have much basis for judgment as to whether this is better or worse than average for the series. It was, however, an enjoyable little adventure.
Sharpe is definitely in the Horatio Hornblower mold: superbly talented but plagued by self-doubt. At least that's how he's supposed to be. Sharpe's "self-doubt" in this book came across more as "totally reasonable doubts about a fucking insane plan". Because having doubts about assaulting a town of 2,000 French troops with 200 soldiers (and 300 peasant rabble) is a sign of self-doubt how?
Where Hornblower has his limitations -- he's a brilliant ship's captain but aware that the crew are better at their tasks -- Sharpe is more of a modern Hollywood hero and seems to be good at everything. Not only is he awesome with a rifle but also the sword; not only a good sergeant but a good lieutenant; not just a good soldier but a good leader; not just a good warrior but a good tactician. That's fair enough, it's part of the adventure novel genre, but I did slightly miss Hornblower's flaws.
Sharpe clearly has a bit of history by this point in his literary career. I enjoyed those little asides without explanation. They felt like the kind of real world detail an actual person with 15-years of military experience would have. No flashbacks to India, just a bare statement of fact.
The most grating part of the novel is the way he fell instantly in love with The Girl. They only appeared to speak together two or three times and he's already planning marriage. I don't he had even held her hand prior to proposing. Other reviews I've read suggest that this is a common theme in the books; I'm not looking forward to future incarnations if that's the case.
One last comment: there is a weird ellipsis in the final action. The final battle is about to start and then everything jumps forward several hours, Hornblower hurt his foot somewhere, the Riflemen are cut off and about to make their Last Stand, the Spanish Major is nowhere to be found, The Girl is for unknown reasons with the Riflemen. WTF is going on? I seriously though that one (or more) chapters had been ripped out of the book. I went back and checked...I was on Chapter 17. The previous chapter was 16. Was the author getting tired of writing? Was this an attempt to compress the action to its best bits? If so, it was handled artlessly and let me very disoriented and confused.
Over the years a number of people have asked this same question of the Sharpe books and my googling turned up several answers. The one I ended up going with was, "Read them in chronological order but skip straight to the Peninsular War stuff with Sharpe's Rifles."
I liked Sharpe's Rifles but I have a feeling that many of those warm fuzzy feelings are due to the novelty of the setting rather than much intrinsic merit. Since I've not read any of the other Sharpe books I don't have much basis for judgment as to whether this is better or worse than average for the series. It was, however, an enjoyable little adventure.
Sharpe is definitely in the Horatio Hornblower mold: superbly talented but plagued by self-doubt. At least that's how he's supposed to be. Sharpe's "self-doubt" in this book came across more as "totally reasonable doubts about a fucking insane plan". Because having doubts about assaulting a town of 2,000 French troops with 200 soldiers (and 300 peasant rabble) is a sign of self-doubt how?
Where Hornblower has his limitations -- he's a brilliant ship's captain but aware that the crew are better at their tasks -- Sharpe is more of a modern Hollywood hero and seems to be good at everything. Not only is he awesome with a rifle but also the sword; not only a good sergeant but a good lieutenant; not just a good soldier but a good leader; not just a good warrior but a good tactician. That's fair enough, it's part of the adventure novel genre, but I did slightly miss Hornblower's flaws.
Sharpe clearly has a bit of history by this point in his literary career. I enjoyed those little asides without explanation. They felt like the kind of real world detail an actual person with 15-years of military experience would have. No flashbacks to India, just a bare statement of fact.
The most grating part of the novel is the way he fell instantly in love with The Girl. They only appeared to speak together two or three times and he's already planning marriage. I don't he had even held her hand prior to proposing. Other reviews I've read suggest that this is a common theme in the books; I'm not looking forward to future incarnations if that's the case.
One last comment: there is a weird ellipsis in the final action. The final battle is about to start and then everything jumps forward several hours, Hornblower hurt his foot somewhere, the Riflemen are cut off and about to make their Last Stand, the Spanish Major is nowhere to be found, The Girl is for unknown reasons with the Riflemen. WTF is going on? I seriously though that one (or more) chapters had been ripped out of the book. I went back and checked...I was on Chapter 17. The previous chapter was 16. Was the author getting tired of writing? Was this an attempt to compress the action to its best bits? If so, it was handled artlessly and let me very disoriented and confused.