The Sharpe series of books

[Mount Suribachi]

I never watched the TV series or read the books - I just assumed it was just a load of light entertainment guff. Then I read in a thread elsewhere about how good & popular they are round these parts - more faction than fiction.

Is this the case?

Are they any good?

Will my (somewhat lacking) knowlesge of the Napoleanic era be enhanced?

What order should I read them in? (checked in Ottakers today, there's 18 of em )

[Axeknight]

Gah Read them. They are very factual, and only change the minorest of details (such as the name of the guy who rowed the boat over the river Tagus to allow the first redcoatsover into the Oporto semiatry - though he stayed as a barber, that's how minor). Really good.

As for order, try The official site for details on chronological order. though you may want to skip the India ones if you're not interested in the Indian campaigns, as they're all explained in the Peninsular period (when Sharpe's an officer). In India, he's a ranker (private, then sergeant). He then becomes an officer.

[frogbeastegg]

I find them to be like most Cornwell books - good but very overrated. :waits to be stoned to death:

I liked the original series, from Sharpe's Rifles up to Sharpe's Devil, but now the author has gone back and added new books that are just not needed. These new books, in my opinion, cram extras, unneeded and unwanted information into Sharpe's world, and water down the original considerably. I also think that the author no longer writes as well as he used to do, I found many of his recent works to be so disappointing I have banished him from my reading lists.

I would recommend starting with Sharpe's Rifles and deciding from there.

[Axeknight]

I started at Rifles, I've now read Rifles, Havoc, Eagle, and Gold, and am reading Sharpe's Tiger (which someone who didn't know which one to get me got) at the mo'. I'm not as interested in the Indian campaigns, and Sharpe the private isn't as interesting as Sharpe the officer, IMO.

[Mount Suribachi]

Well, I went and bought Sharpes Rifles yesterday (along with A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Papillon & The Mystery of the Dog Who Died in the night - went a bit mad in Ottaker ). Read a good hundred pages. So far its seems like good ole swashbuckling fun. Nothing too highbrow, but entertaining nevertheless

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Great books. The best ones are Sharpes Trafalgar, Truimph, Tiger, Eagle, sword, Enemy, Company...hell there all good

[Mount Suribachi]

well, I finished Sharpes Rifles last night. I though it was good swashbuckling fun. However I was *very* disapointed with the Hollywoodised ending - The Spanish Count fights & kills his treacherous brother in a 1 v1 battle and Sharpe fights & kills his nemesis in a 1 v 1 battle Oh and the victory that turns to defeat that turns to victory I'm sorry, but I find that kind of ending so predictably yawnsome. If all his books end like that then I'm not sure I want to buy them.

[katank]

sound like MTW jedi fights?

I never read the Sharpe ones. Are they better than Starbuck chronicles?

I read a few of that series and liked them reasonably.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

There not all like that, honestly if your starting with Sharpes rifles you should now go to the sharpe books set in India which show sharpe as a private and how he rose through the ranks. Sharpes Tiger is one of my true favs.

[JAG]

Good books by a great author, though his Starbuck books are better *plugs shamelessly*

[frogbeastegg]

Yes, they are all like that. Wait until Sharpe gets shot in the stomach, nearly dies but :gasp: doesn't I found the books based in India to be much duller than the original Napoleonic series, but I suppose it is, in part, a matter of taste for the setting.

Cornwell's king Arthur series was quite good, his grail quest books were rather bad, I haven't read his American civil war books, or that one off romantic thingy...'gallows thief' or whatever it was called. He just isn't interesting any more. Simon Scarrow does the same thing far better, and with a Roman setting too, although I must say his last book was a bit mundane.

[Kaiser of Arabia]

I just started Eagle.
My fav so far has been Rifles, but Enemy is also really good, so is fortress.
:procedes to stone all fans of the Starbuck series to death for perfering some coffee over sharpe: lol.

[katank]

that's quite interesting.

hmmmm, I do think it depends a bit upon your location.

if you are in the US, you are likely to come across the Starbuck books first (although caporegime puts a dent in my theory).

It's funny how I was acquainted with the books before the coffee shop and thought the shop was a ripoff.

*cringes in fear of stoning*

[Iashiii]

I have to agree with Frogbeastegg. I loved the original series, read them all, saw all the movies - brilliant. however, his latest books have been far less interesting - like he's just doing it for the money. IMHO, he doesn't write as well now - less engaging, more basic - more sensationalist (i.e. more pointless swearing). The orginals are the best. Even better, however, are the Arthurian series - excellent tragedy.

[Rufus]

I'm looking forward to reading The Winter King after I finish what I'm reading now (a nonfiction book The Last Knight by Norman Cantor, a history of John of Gaunt and his era - pretty good, I may write a review and post it up here)

But I'm a little concerned about The Winter King because I found it in the FANTASY aisle at Border's rather than the regular fiction section, where other historical fiction books are.

So is this the bookstore's error (it's historical fiction, Saxons vs. Britons, etc.) or are they right (sorcery and spells and crap)?

[Iashiii]

Don't worry, they are mainly historical (i.e. Britons vs Saxons). However, Cornwell does include some of the 'romantic' characters, for instance Guinevere & Lancelot, which apparaently were originally totally made up. Nevertheless, the fictional characters are always in a very real setting, and there is no dragons, and sourcery, or spells etc.
Enjoy reading them

[Divine Wind]

Shameless bump of an old thread i apoligise, but i only just noticed this thread in the library list made by ludans.

Having read all the Sharpe and Starbuck books, i recently gave Stonehenge and Harlequin a go and i did find them most enjoyable. Longer than you usual Bernard Cornwell books the medieval setting was a pleasant change and i didnt put them down until i had finished both.

If you enjoy is writing style then give these a try.

Oh and has anyone watched the DVD box set of Sharpe? Ive been looking out for it in the shops but everywhere i go its priced at £100 plus, so i dont want to fork out that much for something ive already got on VHS.

[matteus the inbred]

Great books. The best ones are Sharpes Trafalgar, Truimph, Tiger, Eagle, sword, Enemy, Company...hell there all good

i liked the India ones quite a lot, different scene, different Sharpe (he's younger and not so bitter and grumpy), but my favourites are Sword, Battle (it's funnier somehow, as it has some of the characters from the TV adaptations in) , Enemy, Company and probably Siege (the first one i ever read). Devil is a funny one, as in odd. and it also clearly states that Sharpe's never been in a sea battle before, which is why i found Trafalgar (to finally get round to this quote from The Blind King of Bohemia!) to be unsatisfying and contrived. the one in Denmark was rubbish. and i've not read any Cornwell since, gone off him.

i thought the Arthurian series was a great return to form. i liked the Starbuck series as well, but found many of the characters very annoyingly glib and slightly incomprehensible, rather like reading James Lee Burke (fantastic, best descriptive writer i've ever read!), where i don't understand half of what they're saying because it's all in colloquial deep south American...! apologies to all Johnny Rebs out there, i'm only a limey after all...

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I liked trafalger apart from one bit when kills the lawyer just because he knows about the fling aboard ship. It seems out of Sharpes character killing an innocent man whose only real crime is that he loves the woman sharpe is having an affair with.

Even i have to admit the last two were pretty woeful in Sharpe book standards

[matteus the inbred]

oh yeah, i remember that. Sharpe is undoubtedly a hard bastard, but it was indeed somewhat out of character.

well, i just felt that the manner in which Sharpe got into the situations in order to have a novel in the first place got very contrived when compared to the later books...but this is always a problem for authors rewriting or expanding a character's backstory and i am largely sympathetic to this sort of thing. but i do think the series was two or three books too long. i just hope we won't have a 'Sharpe's Beginning' or something similar dealing with the Flanders campaign.

the Arthurian series rocks and gave me a real enthusiasm for the period just as the original Sharpe books did, they should have read it before they made the recent film.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

i loved reading all the sharpe books because i found they very interesting and well written... so much in fact that it made me like the napoleonic era of histoire

[Incongruous]

Cornwell IMO is the best around as he manages to personalise and humanise characters such as Wellesley. His Sharpe books are excellent (all of them), Graile Quest was really good aswell, quite dark. His series on Arthur I didn't like, But The last kingdom was really good.

[King Henry V]

I just read the Pale Horseman, sequel to the Last Kingdom, anmd I highly recommend it. They way Cornwell describes the battle of Edington is simply the best he has ever written, IMO. From the start of the battle, where the two great shield walls of Danes and Saxons face each other, I could really feel the sense of fear men had, I could see myself stnading in those ranks, shield locked against shield and my bowels knotted and twisted in sheer terror! The battle continues with both speed and a great attention for detail, the rout of the Saxon right wing, the butcher of the Danish left and finally the assault upon the anicent fortress of Ethandun, sliding in the mud and blood up the steep slope...excellent writing.
There are two things which I'm not so keen on. The first is one of the most repeated phrases in his books: Fate is [bloody] inexorable! I am so damn fed up with this sentence, it appears at least half a dozen times in every book and I just can't stand reading it any longer.
Another things is that characters are quite unimagniative. The girls are basically the same: one is the dark, scrawny, fiesty girl who is as hard as nails: Teresa the guerilla, Nimue/Iseult the sorceress, Brida the East Anglian Dane-lover who also has some sorcery skills. Then there's the golden haired beauty who is so soft and kind: Jane Gibbon (admittedly she does go sour), Ceinwyn the Powysian princess and Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great (she's only a little girl in the Pale Horseman, but you can predict she'll be Uhtred next love because Iseult foretells he'll capture Bebbanburg with a woman of gold and he swears allegiance to Alfred just because Aethelflaed is looking at him...).
Uhtred is very much a rehash of Dervel, boy born on one side, raised by another and fights against his own blood (albeit Uhtred gets some sense into him and fights for the Saxons). Nearly all his main characters are bastards and the hero's mother almost never appears. This is reflective of the fact that Cornwell was himself illegitimate, a war baby of a Canadian pilot and an English WAAF, given up for adoption and raised by members of the Peculiar People, a Puritanical sect who forbade television and medicine (ironically, Cornwell went on to become a TV producer for the BBC). This shown in many instances: somebody falls ill, stupid Christian prayers don't save them, but then pagan person comes, chants a few things, pisses in the corner and throws a few herbs around and ill person gets better .
But apart from these foibles, I find Cornwell to be a very good writer, he tells excellent stories, his characters just need a bit more working on. However, a suppose that is one of the effects of being a very succesful writer, your well of originality runs dry and you basically have to recycle people.

[matteus the inbred]

hmmmm. that's all very interesting King Henry V...i haven't read Pale Horseman, but i agree, he does lack some originality in his characters and 'stock phrases' start to appear. i find many of his Irish characters to be glib rascals largely indistinguishable from each other, for example. still, so many books, only one author, it's bound to happen.

i actually lost interest in his books for a while due to the Starbuck series, when every battle scene became so similar i couldn't be bothered...the last book was about Antietam(Sharpsburg) and just went on and on...i think a rest from the nineteenth century did him good.