Just Finished Reading: Sharpe’s Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell

June 1815. After a brief respite the armies of Napoleon are once again on the march. After holding the French advance at Quatre Bras the scratch British force is forced to withdraw after the retreat of their Prussian allies exposes their flank. The great General Wellington must search for a place to hold the most dangerous army in Europe. Falling back towards Brussels he halts his meagre force at a sleepy village called Waterloo. It is here that the British will face the might of the Emperors forces. Both sides are largely undefeated on the field of battle and both realise that the future of Europe will be decided on the killing fields of Belgium. If the British can hold the advance until reinforcements arrive all could still be saved. In the thick of the fighting is the newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Richard Sharpe brought back from retirement for one last battle with his old enemy. But even Sharpe can see that the odds are terribly stacked against them. Maybe this will indeed be his last battle.

This is my 10^th Sharpe novel which equals my 10 Anita Blake books. Sharpe is a wonderful character created by the extremely talented Bernard Cornwell. His books are windows into a different time full of the grit, desperation and heroism. The Napoleonic Wars are brought to life in all their awesome horror. Massed cavalry charges cut down by cannon fire, ranks of barely educated men disfigured by musket round and sabre cut, officers without the first notion of war casually killing their men wholesale for prestige and delusions of honour. Sharpe of course, being the hero, saves the day at the appropriate moment but not before he causes mayhem behind the lines as he challenges his wife’s lover to a duel and attempts to kill his dangerously stupid superior officer. This is a great book to literally lose yourself in. I found that it took me some moments to reconnect to the real world after being immersed in Cornwell’s or rather Sharpe’s one. I couldn’t help thinking that this novel was less of a book and more of a time machine. No wonder my clothes started to smell of gunpowder…..