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Title: Sharpe's Tiger
Series:
Sharpe #1
Author: Bernard Cornwell
Rating:
3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages:
287
Words: 121.5K
From Wikipedia.org
Richard
Sharpe is a private in the 33rd Regiment of Foot in the British army.
The British invade Mysore and advance on the Tippoo Sultan's capital
city of Seringapatam. Sharpe is contemplating desertion with his
paramour, half-caste army widow Mary Bickerstaff, due to his sadistic
company sergeant, Obadiah Hakeswill. Hakeswill lusts after Mary, so
he provokes Sharpe into hitting him before witnesses, company
commander Captain Morris and Ensign Hicks. Sharpe is
court-martialled; Lieutenant William Lawford, who is supposed to act
as his defender, is absent and Sharpe is given the virtual death
sentence of 2,000 lashes. However, the regiment's commander, Colonel
Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington), halts the punishment
at just over 200 lashes. Lawford has been offered an extremely
dangerous mission and has requested Sharpe. Sharpe agrees to go along
if he is made a sergeant if they are successful.
Lawford
and Sharpe pose as deserters to try to rescue Colonel Hector
McCandless, Lawford's uncle and chief of the British East India
Company's intelligence service. Sharpe's flogging inadvertently makes
their cover story more plausible. Sharpe quickly takes charge and
brings Mary along, to protect her from Hakeswill and because she
speaks several of the native languages. They are soon captured by
scouts from the Tippoo's army and taken to Seringapatam where they
meet Colonel Gudin, a French military adviser to the Tippoo. During
their interrogation, the Tippoo enters and orders them to load
muskets. He then orders Sharpe to shoot a British prisoner, Colonel
McCandless; he does, having noticed that the "gunpowder" he
has been given is fake. The musket does not fire. After covertly
telling McCandless that he is a spy, he is told by McCandless that
the British must not attack the seemingly weakest portion of the city
walls. (It is later revealed that the Tippoo has had mines buried
there to blow up the British when they enter the trap.)
Lawford
and Sharpe join Gudin's troops, whilst Mary is sent to work as a
servant in the household of one of the Tippoo's generals, Appah Rao,
a Hindu who, unknown to the Muslim Tippoo, is considering switching
sides. As they search for their contact, a merchant who can pass
along the vital warning to the besieging British forces. Gudin tests
the pair further, giving them rifled fowling guns (Sharpe's first
exposure to a rifled weapon instead of a smoothbore musket). Sharpe's
shot is slightly high, but Lawford, to his mortification, ends up
hitting a British scout.
As a
further test, Sharpe helps defend a Mysore encampment which is
attacked by the British. During the attack, Sharpe encounters
Hakeswill and tries to kill him, but is stopped by Gudin, who wants
prisoners. Back in Seringapatam, Hakeswill spots Lawford in the
crowd, but does not betray him (yet). Sharpe is rewarded for his
actions by the Tippoo and is allowed to visit Mary. He finds that she
is attracted to one of Appah Rao's men, Kunwar Singh, news which
Sharpe takes in good grace. Meanwhile, the Tippoo orders the
prisoners executed by his personal bodyguard, the fearsome Jettis,
but spares Hakeswill when the sergeant betrays Lawford and Sharpe.
The two are captured and Sharpe is tortured until Lawford reveals
their mission. Gudin then tells them that the spy they sought in the
city had been killed weeks before and fed to the Tippoo's pet tigers.
They are then imprisoned with McCandless and Hakeswill. During their
imprisonment, Lawford teaches Sharpe to read and write to make him a
more effective sergeant.
After
days of bombardment, the British finally breach the wall and prepare
to attack. With the assault imminent, Appah Rao orders Kunwar Singh
to free McCandless, whilst the Tippoo orders Sharpe, Lawford and
McCandless executed as a sacrifice to ensure his victory. Mary
accompanies Singh and helps Sharpe escape. Sharpe, accompanied by
Lawford, then sets the mine off prematurely. As a result, many of the
Tippoo's best soldiers are killed or stunned, and the British enter
the breach in the walls. Rao decides to abandon the Tippoo and
withdraws his men. Sharpe returns to Hakeswill and throws him to the
Tippoo's tigers, hoping they will eat the sergeant (though they
inexplicably ignore him). Sharpe then encounters the Tippoo, who is
trying to flee the city, kills him and loots his corpse.
The
British capture the city and restore the Hindu rajah to the throne,
as a British puppet ruler. Sharpe carefully takes no credit for
killing the Tippoo to avoid having to surrender the jewels he looted.
I've got two gripes with this book then I'll go into what I did like.
One, this is chronologically the first book but not the first
published book. I am a fan of reading a series in order of
publication because of the layers involved that authors build up over
time. Who knows what Cornwell revealed to me in this book that was a
mystery in the earlier published books? Of course, now that I started
out chronologically, I'll be sticking to it. So poo to that! Second,
Sharpe is an anti-hero asshole, at best. He's the protagonist but by
no means a hero. If he stays that way, we'll have to see how many
books I get through before giving up on this.
What I did like though, far outweighs those two things, at least for
now. The writing. Just like any other hobby, once you've passed a
certain level you begin to recognize when something is inherently
correct and done well. That doesn't mean you'll always like it but
you're pigheaded to deny the craftsmanship behind it. Cornwell can
write well and it shows. Each character is a “real” person in
terms of personality and nobody is a cardboard cutout. When a book
makes me see the events and not just “shown”, that also shows
wordsmith skills.
This is “historical” fiction and while I've anecdotally heard
that Cornwell is pretty good about keeping things faithful, that
little word “fiction” makes that distinction pointless to me.
What that practically means is that you won't be hearing me write
things like “Well, because of what I read by Cornwell, the blah,
blah, blabbity blah, reasons, reasons, blah blah blah”. Ever. If
Cornwell was a historian, he'd be writing dry, boring and dusty tomes
(even though Matt
might disagree with my assessment of most history books :-D ), not
adventure novels.
★★★✬☆
