One Book In- Sharpe’s Tigers

It is always nice to be reminded how much you don’t know. I don’t say that facetiously either. Strolling through the library recently, looking for something to read, I was confronted with shelves full of authors that I’d either heard of, and wasn’t interested in, or had read or authors I’ve never heard of and had only one or two books. I love trying new authors but I’d been burned by the last few I’d tried and was feeling leerier that day.

I happened upon the “C”s and Bernard Cornwell. Almost two shelves were devoted to his books. This was a guy who I had never heard of but who had written quite a lot. I love making that discovery because if I like the author I have a lot of material to chew through. But what was even more surprising was the type of books he wrote; historical fiction. He has several series, the longest running of which surround Richard Sharpe during the Napoleonic era. This is an era of time perfect for long-running series. I’ve read a few of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series (ie the books Master and Commander was based on) and enjoyed them. They do get a little dense at time though.

So I decided to give Cornwell a chance. I decided to start with a stand-alone, “Agincourt” before trying a series. I love history (I did major in it and did want to teach it for a time) and the Battle of Agincourt had good potential. Sadly, the book wasn’t an intoxicating page turner. But it was good enough to keep me interested in Cornwell and it did accomplish my favorite part of historical fiction; piquing my curiosity.

I love learning about history and absorbing the story of it. Good historical fiction tells the story but leaves me curious for more. Was this accurate? What else happened? It presents a historical event through a new lens; that of people living it rather than a series of events. This gives me a frame of reference to then go take a look at what actually happened and see how the book and reality mesh. Good historical fiction gets the important parts right and only takes liberties with necessary. At the back of Cornwell’s book he has some notes on where he deviated and why.

After “Agincourt” I picked up “Sharpe’s Tiger”, the first chronologically in the Richard Sharpe series. Apparently, Cornwell has pulled a Star Wars by writing some in this series, then going back and writing what are essentially prequels and then more in the future. It will be interesting to compare them when I get to the “original trilogy” (not actually a trilogy) set of books that were written twenty years before the ones I just read.

This book was a lot better than “Agincourt”. Part of it is that the historical event, the Siege of Seringapatam is the setting, not the point of the book. It was clear in “Agincourt” that Cornwell wanted to write about that battle. This book is about Sharpe and that works to its benefit.

I ended up really liking the POV Cornwell uses, which surprises me some when I think about it. The POV shifts from paragraph to paragraph at times. Often, it follows Sharpe or one of the other main characters pretty closely but it’s not locked in. When appropriate, the view shifts to another character for a few paragraphs or two. Instead of being disorienting, which would be easy to do, it works to convey the broader picture of what’s going on.

Most things I read stick to a solid limited third person POV. That’s normally where I write too. This is essentially staying inside one characters head within a given section of the book. It’s a good way to write and keep the story making sense. You can’t flounder around between peoples heads all the time or risk confusing the reader.

But Cornwell makes it work. I think in part because of the nature of historical fiction. He’s telling Richard Sharpe’s story but in the setting of the Battle of Seringapatam. So we the reader, are also interested in seeing how this plays out, something we can’t do if the POV is locked to Richard Sharpe all the time or if entire sections/chapters need to be devoted to the POV character. We move around just enough to understand the whole picture.

One thing that intrigued me about this series before I started was when I learned that there is a TV series based on some of the books and Richard Sharpe is played by Sean Bean. Clearly, at least a few people enjoyed it. And Sean Bean gets to act in something and not die since he’s the main character.

If I have one critique, its that Cornwell really loves the word “bastard”. He uses it a lot. It was jarring in Agincourt. It seems to be a character trait of Sharpe’s and works much better there, since he’s the only one doing it. But everybody called everybody bastards in “Agincourt”.

I look forward to reading more of this series. It is long running so I expect to get burned out after a few books. But that’s okay. That just means there’s more for later.