I said a few weeks ago that since reading Bernard Cornwell’s ‘Saxon’ series I was going to buy some of his Sharpe books to read. Having always avoided the “Sharpe’s…” books I’m now going to be searching them out. They’re great! It seems the only downside of seeing Sharpe on TV is that I now picture Sean Bean speaking when ever I read a line spoken by Sharpe! It’s funny how when you read characters develop in your mind and in some ways I missed that not happening as I read my first Sharpe book.
I’m noticing that all the books I’m enjoying are filled with detail. This book is no exception and Bernard Cornwell has clearly done a lot of research in order to have his soldier Sharpe appear and fight in the battle of Trafalgar. I guess the question you may be asking is how did a soldier end up on a ship with Nelson? The answer – is very logical but I’m not going to tell you as it would spoil part of the story. hehe. The battle of Trafalgar is really only the last part of the story anyway, before that he has quite a few other adventures and close shaves with death. I enjoyed the action and I enjoyed reading the detail of the ships. One other thing that I like about Bernard Cornwells characters (both Richard Sharpe and Uhtred from the Saxon stories) is that all though the main character is like-able, they’re far from perfect and in some situations, very nasty. Sharpe killed a man who was trying to blackmail him in this story and got away with it. I think that personality adds to the realism of the stories though, implying life was cheap in centuries past.

While I am glad to have read this book, it’s not one I’d have missed reading. I’m not sure quite why I feel that way about it. It had a great deal of astonishing and logical detail of technology of the future (from ‘mining’ hydrogen gas from the atmosphere of Titan to sensor arrays to search for extraterrestrial life) and I do like exploring those ideas and theories, and yes, the sci-fi dreams of the author. I guess it was something to do with the story line that didn’t enthrall me, I just didn’t feel empathetic with the characters to make my interest in them any more than to make them comments in passing between the technology. One thing I did like was the ending. I wont say what I liked about the ending as that would spoil the story if ever you get to read it, but it came with an unexpected twist and a flurry of ‘new’ technology ideas.