Another week, another book
Some might say I have way too much free time but I would countermand that by pointing out that reading to me is like eating - a necessity for life, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, books would be one of the base layers of my pyramid! I also read way too fast, skimming ahead to the interesting bits, although using an eReader does at least now stop my really bad habit of checking at the end to make sure my character is still alive!
Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell is the very first in the novels about Richard Sharpe, immortalised on TV by Sean Bean (which I have never watched, although having seen this website, I am quite tempted. I'm late, very late to the Sharpe phenomenon and only considered reading the books (because I will work my way through them all, I love stumbling across an author with a big back catalogue) when I was downloading another Bernard Cornwell for my holidays and noticed all the Sharpe books listed, prior to this, the only other BC book I'd read was Azincourt which I found to be completely amazing, such a fantastic story that I wanted more.
Sharpe is a 'lovable rogue', an orphan who turned to crime and who then joined the army to escape the hangman after he killed an innkeeper in an argument about a woman. But there's more to Sharpe than this, he's clearly good looking and intelligent, strong and physically quick, a charmer who women desire and other men admire and aspire to be.
This book is set in 1799, in India, the campaign against Seringapatam, the success of which made the British masters of southern India. But it's not just a story of a fight, BC does so much more than that, the details of the characters are clearly and deeply told, so that you feel their success and failure as they do.
Sharpe starts the story as a mere private in the 33rd Light company and ends it as a sergeant, 1 step up, but with 20 or so books to go who knows how far Sharpe will progress, I look forward to finding out!
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