Sharpe's Trafalgar

Bernard Cornwell

ISBN 10: 0007261918 ISBN 13: 9780007261918

Publisher: HarperCollins Audiobooks, 2009

Synopsis

The seventeenth Sharpe novel sees Sharpe returning from India to London to join the newly formed Green Jackets in Britain. His voyage home should be a period of rest, but his ship is riven with treachery and threatened by the Revenant, a French sea-raider that is terrorising British shipping in the Indian Ocean. Betrayed and defeated, Sharpe is imprisoned on the Ile de France, doomed to rot there until the war ends. But an unlikey ally secures his escape into a British warship that is hunting the Revenant. That hunt turns into a pursuit as the French ship races home, and when she encounters the combined French and Spanish fleets of Cadiz, it seems Sharpe's enemies are safe. But over the horizon is another fleet, led by Nelson, and Sharpe's revenge will come when the two armadas meet on a calm October day off Cape Trafalgar.

About this title

Review

For military-history buffs, Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels are the literary equivalent of potato chips: you can't read just one. And in this case, why would you want to? Blending meticulous research and old-fashioned entertainment, the series follows the roguish adventurer Richard Sharpe as he swashbuckles his way through the Napoleonic Wars. In Sharpe's Trafalgar, the author ventures into Patrick O'Brian's maritime territory. Anchors aweigh, lads, and bring on the detailed descriptions of the ship's guns and their firing mechanisms!

In the beginning of the book, our hero sets sail for England after five months of service in India. The plot revolves around a disguised diplomat, a marauding French warship, and an improbable love affair with a comely English aristocrat. But make no mistake, the real draw here is combat. The battle scenes crackle with energy, and we can practically feel the chop of the waves and smell the reek of gunpowder. (We can also smell 600 unwashed men in close quarters with rats, sewage, and bilge rot, but that's another matter entirely.) The last hundred pages fly by at a furious clip, cannons pounding and cutlasses hacking, as Cornwell re-creates the naval battle of Trafalgar.

These days, of course, we know that war is bloody and brutal, not honorable or fair. We like even our most appealing warriors to have some passing acquaintance with their dark side, and Sharpe does take a decidedly antiheroic stance on the experience of hand-to-hand combat:

He was ashamed when he remembered the joy of it, but there was a joy there. It was the happiness of being released to the slaughter, of having every bond of civilization removed. It was also what Richard Sharpe was good at. It was why he wore an officer's sash instead of a private's belt, because in almost every battle the moment came when the disciplined ranks dissolved and a man simply had to claw and scratch and kill like a beast.

Beast or no beast, Sharpe is far more interesting and complex than the musket-wielding action figure he might first appear. And it's nearly impossible not to take some pleasure at his bloody exploits. Sharpe's Trafalgar is a superb example of the ripping good yarn--it confirms our secret conviction that war may be hell, but it's actually pretty exciting too. --Mary Park

From the Back Cover

A dazzling nautical adventure that finds Bernard Cornwell's beloved ensign Richard Sharpe in the middle of one of history's most spectacular naval engagements: the battle at Cape Trafalgar off the coast of Spain.

The year is 1805, and Richard Sharpe, having completed his tour in India (Sharpe's Tiger; Sharpe's Triumph; Sharpe's Fortress), is headed back to England, where he will join a newly formed regiment, the Green Jackets. Traveling aboard Captain Peculiar Cromwell's East Indiaman cargo ship, the Calliope, is the lovely Lady Grace Hale, whose regal presence may provide intrigue and distraction from what promises to be an otherwise uneventful voyage home.

But nothing is uneventful in the life of Richard Sharpe, even at sea: the Calliope 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, if delivered, could provoke India into a new war against the British -- and render for naught all that Sharpe has fought for so bravely 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.

Then Admiral Horatio Nelson arrives, with his magnificent fleet of twenty-seven. 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Audiobooks
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0007261918
• ISBN 13: 9780007261918
• Binding: Audio CD