Joined in 2023 
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Crowbarring him in actually makes the main plot less clear – I have no idea what really developed from it. No more beautifully descriptive sceneries and locations, just completely over the top meaningless words. Whether writing about Waterloo, Assaye or any of the less celebrated battles that form the backbone of Sharpe’s adventures, Cornwell is rightly celebrated for his historical accuracy and his ability to capture the frenetic chaos of war and bloodshed. There are smaller things like Theresa not having a rifle and asking for one, yet she should have one by this point.
His father was a Canadian airman, and his mother, who was English, a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.Bernard Cornwell’s latest (2023) Sharpe adventure Sharpe’s Command places our hero at the battle of the Bridge at Almaraz, 1812 – as usual, based on historical events. At 300 pages, it was comparatively short- not a fault in its own right, but it was also repetitive and very little happened.
It's one of the breezier Sharpe books at 300 pages, and I enjoyed the laser focus on a single clear mission with a fun fictional French-sympathizing Spanish villain getting in Sharpe's way as he's trying to fulfill his reconnoissance task ahead of the attack. Douglas Smith provides rousing scratchboard images for the first illustrated editions of Bernard Cornwell’s enormously popular historical adventures. The binding design, resplendent in black and gold foils, features one of the enemies’ spectacular war elephants, while the historical note by Cornwell discusses how Sharpe’s Triumph contains a ‘crucial moment’ in Richard Sharpe’s lively career. Napoleon's army may be defeated, but another enemy lies waiting in the shadows – a secretive group of fanatical revolutionaries hell-bent on revenge. Sharpe takes advantage of the situation, thinking what the officer should do to win the battle, but the officer does not.
This is set back in the middle of the Peninsular War - The Bridge at Alamaraz in May 1812 to be precise - putting it after Sharpe's Company (The Siege of Badajoz, January - April 1812) but before Sharpe's Sword (the Salamanca Campaign of June and July 1812). He has drawn numerous projects for Greenpeace, including an anti-whaling children’s book and an internationally famous t-shirt design opposing the annual ‘harvest’ of harp seal pups. So when, the dust still settling after the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington needs a favour, he turns to Sharpe. Sitting high above the Almaraz bridge, it is the last link between two French armies, one in the north and one in the south; if they meet, the British are doomed. Sharpe is bloodthirsty and reckless with people's lives, given that this was straight after Badajoz I'd have remembered that he was mentally traumatised by that experience.
Now, let me say that it's still in good company even among the lower Sharpe's entries and I am always game for yet more Sharpe's adventures. While I am sure Cornwell enjoys his job and I have no objection to him making money from it, Sharpe’s Command does feel like he needed some cash to renovate the indoor lap pool at Chatham.The bloodthirsty biographies of the world’s most infamous pirates are reproduced in this Folio edition of Captain Charles Johnson’s renowned work, including original woodcut illustrations and a fascinating introduction by Margarette Lincoln. This was exactly the change of pace I needed after Dance with Dragons, and I hope Cornwell still has more of these in him since it'll be a sad day when I have no more new Sharpe stories to enjoy. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.
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