Book Review: Sharpe’s Tiger, by Bernard Cornwell

I’ve been hearing about Bernard Cornwell’s “Sharpe” series for some time, even before Sean Bean began making a name for himself by dying dramatically in movies (I’m not being flip—too flip, anyway—he dies better than just about anyone. His death as Boromir still gets me choked up). I finally got around to picking up the first book in the series, “Sharpe’s Tiger”. It turns out that it’s only first in chronological order, not in the order they were written. I don’t know if that’s good, bad, or indifferent, however.

If you’re looking for a book about the noble British bringing civilization to the world, this isn’t it. In many ways the book is as dark and gritty as I care to take on. Life among the lower dregs of His Majesty’s Army is no Sunday in the Park With George. Scum, it seems, rises to the top, and likes to use that position to persecute Private Richard Sharpe.

His Sergeant, Obadiah Hakeswill, has it in for him and is looking for ways to get rid of him so he can take the pretty young widow who’s taken a shine to Sharpe and sell her into prostitution. He nearly succeeds, too, by provoking Sharpe into striking him, which gets him sentenced to a thousand lashes—pretty much guaranteed a death penalty. But frankly by the end of the book I hated Hakeswill as much for his incessantly backing up everything he says by an appeal to the Bible “A private should never go thinking himself above his sergeant! Says so in the scriptures, it does!”

Luckily for Sharpe he has caught the positive attention of a few gentlemen officers as well, and he’s spared from death in order to mount a mission into the fortress of the Muslim warlord trying to wrest India from the British, in order to rescue a captured spy—or at least get what information he has. It’ll take about all the luck, cunning, and strength Sharpe possesses to come out alive again.

Much of the book is grounded in history—much more than I expected, actually. Most of the major events happened, and many of the characters did exist. Obviously they take some liberties with the role Sharpe plays, but even some of that is offered by way of explanation for what really happened. And as a representation of history, Cornwell feels obligated to present everything with a certain level of accuracy. Hence the book gets rather course at times. It’s also not particularly for the squeamish, either.

In the end I enjoyed the book. Cornwell winds the tension up pretty well, and gives Sharpe a great chance to be heroic. He also, in spite of his low birth and station, is probably one of the more moral characters in the army. Indeed, Cornwell pulls no punches in suggesting that the British were hardly the moral superiors of the natives they were there to civilize.

I suppose in part it’s that open honesty in Cornwell’s depiction that allows me to trust him to be my guide through this historical time and place. For the most part there’s little effort wasted on trying to show anyone as “wrong” or “right”. It simply was what it was.

The book doesn’t lack for adventure. Sharpe is not quite a superhero—certainly he’s not the brightest candle on the cake, but he’s a competent soldier, and when he gets riled up in a good cause he’s almost unbelievably good. But that’s the adventure aspect coming through, and it’s good fun.

I’m not in a hurry to rush out and get the next book, but I may come back to Richard Sharpe again. His world is perhaps a bit too gritty for me, but there’s much to recommend it as well. You will come out of it feeling like you understand that part of history a bit better, and that you were able to get a fairly accurate glimpse of life in those times. It was well worth the price of admission.