On the way home from India Sharpe gets caught up in the Battle of Trafalgar

books:


	• Sharpe's Trafalgar: Richard Sharpe & the Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805 (Richard Sharpe's Adventure ... Bernard Cornwell HarperCollins, 2002 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 46 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Great change of pace after the India books

An homage to Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander", the series based on the British Navy of the same period. The fan of both will see numerous similarities.

Sharpe's new friend, Captain Joel Chase, is the spitting image of Jack Aubrey. He's a bluff, good-natured fighting captain whose men would follow him through the gates of Hell, and he personally feels the same way about Admiral Lord Nelson. Sound familiar? He rarely flogs erring sailors. He loves his coffee. He pays for extra powder and shot out of his own pocket so that his crew can practice gunnery. And he's loyal to friends like Sharpe, who comes to Chase's rescue during a Bombay brawl with a dishonest merchant who cheated them both.

There are other touches as well. Sharpe's struggle to climb the masts and perhaps avoid using the maintop's "lubber hole" refers to the same running gag about Stephen Maturin, Aubrey's friend and intrepid but without sealegs.

Sharpe, a soldier, doesn't really belong at Trafalgar. But Cornwell contrives a plausible way to get him there, as Sharpe returns to Britain in 1805 to join a rifles regiment. The India books were fun but, after we've seen all those city walls stormed, all those rajahs plundered, and all those hideous Oriental tortures meted out, it's time to move on. Putting Sharpe on a ship, with its backstays and quarterdecks and scuppers pouring blood during battle, is a fine change of pace.

Cornwell's battle detail is typically gripping. And in this book Sharpe finds a romance that, one senses, may be more fateful than those he's had in previous books.

for more information click here

Sharpe at Trafalgar- You must be kidding!!

I took out this book from the library because I had read Sharpe's Rifles and Sharpe at Waterloo and had liked both of them. But Sharpe at Trafalgar, you must be kidding! Anyway, Sharpe had to get home from India in 1805, so he ends up at Trafalgar. The book works and I could not stop reading it. Two nights I stayed up til 1:00 am reading this book. Highly recommended for a great fun read.

for more information click here

On the way home from India Sharpe gets caught up in the Battle of Trafalgar

Only Richard Sharpe could get caught up in a fleet battle on the way home from India and find romance on a Royal Navy line-of-battle ship. But he does, and it's a highly entertaining read.

Sharpe's Trafalgar is set at the conclusion of the trilogy of novels in India in which he obtains some treasure, gets promoted to be an officer after saving the life of General Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington), and deals with the traitor Dodd. Shipping home to join the 95th Rifles, Sharpe initially takes passage on an East Indiaman, and finds an old opponent as one of the passengers. Treachery follows and the ship is captured by the French.

However, as the story is about Sharpe's Trafalgar, we know that he will not remain a prisoner of war for long. And sure enough, after an involved series of events, including the obligatory rescue of a lady in distress, Sharpe and his fellow passengers find themselves guests on a Royal Navy 74 gun ship of the line, chasing a French battleship half-way round the world. Until both ships arrive off Cape Trafalgar on 21st October 1805 ...

As usual Bernard Cornwell has done a great deal of research so that the Napoleonic era battles he describe seem real, and in the historical note at the end he explains that many of the events described during the battle of Trafalgar were based on things which really happened.

The next novel after this in the chronological sequence is "Sharpe's Prey," the main action of which is set two years later in 1807 when Napoleon's continental blockade results in war between Britain and Denmark. That book also tells you what happens to Sharpe's relationship with Grace, the heroine of "Sharpe's Trafalgar".

If you liked the other Sharpe books, you will like this one.

for more information click here

Excellent Historical Fiction

Cornwell is a master writer in style, depth of characters, and especially in his meticulous research of the period he is writing about. If learning history was always this much fun, I would have majored in it! Realistic descriptions of the carnage of war may spoil the books for those who cannot bear to look upon its presence through the centuries.

Commentary on Cornwell's Books Featuring Sharpe

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RLRXQO2Z8UEBQ A Sharpe book is a history lesson in a sugar coated pill! In this short video I discuss who will like Cornwell's books featuring Richard Sharpe and why. Join me! Frank Derfler author of A Glint in Time [...]

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The year is 1805, and the Calliope, with Richard Sharpe aboard, is captured by a formidable French warship, the Revenant, which has been terrorizing British nautical traffic in the Indian Ocean. The French warship races toward the safety of its own fleet, carrying a stolen treaty that could provoke India into a new war against the British -- and render for naught all that Sharpe has bravely fought for till now.

But help comes from an unexpected quarter. An old friend, a captain in the Royal Navy, is on the trail of the Revenant, and Sharpe comes aboard a 74-gun man-of-war called Pucelle in hot pursuit. What results is a breathtaking retelling of one of the most ferocious and one-sided sea battles in European history, in which Nelson -- and Sharpe -- vanquish the combined naval might of France and Spain at Trafalgar.

for more information click here

hot