Bibliography

Storyline

Sharpe, and Harper therefore set out on one of the strangest adventures yet, meet Napoleon Boneparte in exile, before becoming embroiled in the Chilean Civil war. Along the way they are robbed, treated as traitors, and meet up with a true adventurer Lord Thomas Cochrane, who at the time is in Chile after escaping from a British prison. He later returns to Britain and served with the fleet during the Crimea War.

Sharpe with his eye for adventure slightly less keen after five years at peace help Cochrane to bring down the last bastions of the Spanish Empire in Chile, in what can only be described as a truly stunning victory.

Review

Once he arrives in Chile the pace does not really build up until he is captured in Puerto Crucero, and deported for his pains, in a most humiliating fashion. Sharpe would not have minded, but at the very end he loses the one treasure that he really wants, his beloved long straight sword.

Once on board ship and heading for home, he knows that his only hope is for Cochrane to capture the ship. In the first really exciting part of the book, the ship is captured, and Sharpe is heading back into action. From this point on, the story does pick up, as Sharpe and Cochrane plan to unseat the Spanish from there last strongholds. The final battle (if it can be called that) is truly amazing, and if it hadn't have been based on what really happened I would have probably condemned Cornwell for chickening out, and wanting to keep the novels length down. However as the story more or less follows history, Cornwell cannot be blamed for the Spanish capitulation.

Sharpe returns to Europe after his adventures and in an attempt to find out whether Cochranes plan has worked drops in on St Helena, to find that his Devil Napoleon Bonaparte has died in mysterious circumstances.

Personally I think this Sharpe novel was one a bit to far. The situation far to contrived, and whilst all the usual ingredients are there, it doesn't quite work. This may be because the main part of the novel (about 2/3s) is slow paced, without really setting up the final conflict. We know that his opponent in Chile Bautista, is a vicious thug, but in real terms he is no real threat, as he does not have the ranks of troops that Sharpe has faced in the past.

When the battles do get going, they seem rushed and lack the cut and thrust of some of the earlier action, which returns in later books.

Personally I think the perfect place to have left Sharpe and Harper would have been the battlefields of Waterloo, the scene of his last and greatest victory.

Whilst this last book in the series is not as good, Cornwell does return to form for the novels that fill in Sharpes earlier adventures. Read this one as the final farewell to Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper, as they fade into the past.....

Previous	Index	Next