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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780140294392
ISBN number: 0140294392
Label: Penguin
Manufacturer: Penguin
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: 2001-11
Publishing house: Penguin
Release Date: November 02, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 34359
Studio: Penguin
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Product Description:
Bernard Corwell, author of Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Seige, and Sharpe's Revenge, continues the saga of Lt. Col. Richard Sharpe in this, his final adventure. Just as he comes face-to-face with his estranged wife and her lover at a grand society ball, news comes that the British-Prussian link is under attack. In the Battle of Waterloo, Sharpe once again plays a pivotal role in the outcome of a great British triumph.
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Rated by buyers -
Everything I have read by Bernard Cornwell is engrossing and well written and well researched. I especially like to read the historical notes found at the end of the book and maybe someday I will be able to go to one of the battlefields he writes about.
Rated by buyers 
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Bernard Cornwell's twenty-plus (and growing!) volume Richard Sharpe series has built and built and built to the titanic battle of Waterloo. Sharpe has fought in Flanders, India, Portugal, Spain, and France, and everything in his storied career has led him to this little valley with the odd name. And it led Napoleon and Wellington there, too.
Nobody denies that the world changed in the single day of battle where Wellington narrowly avoided disaster and sent Napoleon down to defeat. Trafalgar and the defeat of the Spanish Armada definitely have their roles in British military history, but it's debatable whether those two battles were more important to the future of Europe than Waterloo. Had Napoleon won, the French juggernaut could have rolled Europe up like a carpet.
But Richard Sharpe and his boon companion, Patrick Harper, have little sense of history. They are pure soldiers, even if Harper has left the army and follows Sharpe to the battlefield only to "watch." Through their eyes, Cornwell paints a magnificent, horrifying you-are-there portrait of the day's carnage, complete with the dizzying stupidity of the Prince of Orange. This peacock nearly cost the British everything by stupidly ordering infantry to form in line rather than square (thereby making them easy pickings for French cavalry) not once, not twice, but three times! For Sharpe and Harper, this is too much, and they take matters into their own hands.
Further complicating matters, Lord John Rossendale has stolen Sharpe's money and taken his wife, Jane. Sharpe does not lament the latter, but he rues the loss of his fortune, and he demands satisfaction. Rossendale, urged on by Jane, plots Sharpe's death on the battlefield, where there is a long tradition of soldiers settling private scores with bullets and bayonets in the back.
"Waterloo" is a bit unusual for Cornwell's books in that the battle is so well-known and so vast. This is not one of those battles where Cornwell has a free canvas to let Sharpe and Harper save the day together. While they surely get a lot to do, there are many other heroes, British and French alike, who get their day in the sun. Sharpe and Harper are by no means quiet, and Sharpe gets his own version of a triumph, but this is a day for real heroes as well.
Cornwell's research is impeccable, as always, and his battlefield prose sings with British pride. This is an excellent book to end the Sharpe series, and one wonders why Cornwell wrote another book after "Waterloo" (Sharpe's Devil). Where is there to go from here?
Rated by buyers -
This book is more than just the battle of Waterloo being retold. It is the story of the clash between empires, between cultures and classes and most importantly between men. The battle is fought through the eyes of Sharpe, Cornwell's hero. You can feel the ground vibrate to the charge of cavalry and smell the grey powder smoke and the mule like kick of the Baker rifle against your shoulder as you pour through the pages.
This is an outstanding read, a must for those that study military history and love adventure.
Rated by buyers -
This is a very compelling 350-page description of a battle. That's pretty hard to pull off, even if you're Bernard Cornwell. Historical accuracy isn't easy to achieve, either--competing versions of events, the squabbling of modern historians, the paucity of evidence on certain events all conspire to make history something that you can't be 100% accurate about. Whatever "accurate" means. But the "inaccuracies" in this novel are no worse than in other works of historical fiction, like Shakespeare's English chronicle histories. I certainly wouldn't argue that Cornwell is a better writer than Shakespeare, but he is far kinder to the Duke of Orange than Shakespeare is to, say, Joan of Arc. I think the combination of realistic detail (the visceral battle scenes) with high romanticism (Sharpe's being single-handedly responsible for all of Napoleon's major defeats on the Peninsula) is nevertheless a very attractive one, the sort of thing that lifts this and the other Sharpe novels out of the "mere fiction" level to the level of at least minor literature. Richard Sharpe is an ingenious literary invention: a fictional device for telling the story of the Duke of Wellington, a man who really did defeat Napoleon that many times.
Rated by buyers -
This is another entry on the Sharpe series. It is fun, entertaining and very readable. Cornwell's research is as excellent as usual. He takes some licenses for the shake of the story and continuity, but this is OK. Some people are outraged by the portrait of some of the real historical characters, but historical characters are rarely depicted accurately in historical fiction, so I think this can be forgiven. Besides, usually a more serious account of these characters is given at the end of the book on the Historical Note.
Many people insist in compare this series with Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. I don't think this is fair for any of the series, they are different entities. What they have in common is that once you start you may get hooked and devour one book after another...
And in the literary world yesterday that is a rare and marvelous thing.
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