Rating: 
Summary: Great adventure story.
Review: The Sharpe series does for the British Army of the Napoleonic era what the Horatio Hornblower novels did for the Royal Navy. These books provide first rate adventure storytelling against a realistic backdrop depicting the world of the Napoleonic Wars. While some the of the plot twists for the immediate characters may seem fanciful (Mr Sharpe seems virtually invulnerable), the background material is factual and well researched. One gets a feeling for what life for the common soldier was like.
Rating:
Summary: Great adventure story.
Review: The Sharpe series does for the British Army of the Napoleonic era what the Horatio Hornblower novels did for the Royal Navy. These books provide first rate adventure storytelling against a realistic backdrop depicting the world of the Napoleonic Wars. While some the of the plot twists for the immediate characters may seem fanciful (Mr Sharpe seems virtually invulnerable), the background material is factual and well researched. One gets a feeling for what life for the common soldier was like.
Rating:
Summary: My ex-favorite Richard Sharpe Book - alas for plagiarism
Review: To me, this book is one of the high points of the series. Major Sharpe doesn't have that many opportunities to command a multi-company force in battle, and he makes the most of it here. Also, he is able to achieve a strategic victory entirely upon his own initiative as commanding officer - a situation which may not occur again (in Sharpe's Siege, the point was to escape rather than defeating the French.)Although the ending involves some tragedy, the plot seems less dark than some of the later books (maybe it's just Jane). To balance that, we meet Sweet William and his company of the 95th. While I would not recommend reading this book first (much better to begin with Rifles), this is a great book to read. Postscript - two years after I wrote this review, I read a book of little-known short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. To my great shock, I found this same basic story written from the French side. I was extremely disappointed to find no mention in Cornwell's notes of having borrowed the premise of English and French soldiers uniting to attack an army of deserters.
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