Sharpe's Company (Richard Sharpe's Adventure Series #13)

This book lived up to Cornwells Sharpes series of historical fiction in a most informative and entertaining story. His ability to put you in the battle keeps you turning page after page and hoping for the next book.

Overall, an excellent novel. I've read many of Sharpe's adventures, and have enjoyed them all. This particular story deals with the siege of Badajoz. It has everything we've come to expect from a Richard Sharpe novel: action, mind-boggling battle scenes, and the occasional romance. My only complaint sounds kinda dumb, even to myself-- the villian, Obadiah Hakeswill. Every so often an author comes up with a villian that he can't bring himself to kill. Even, as in this case, when it goes against all common sense. The character, Sharpe, simply would not allow an enemy to escape as many times as Hakeswill does. I know this is nit-picking, but having some experience in the military, I can safely say that an infantryman does NOT leave an enemy behind him. Not alive, anyway. Okay, enough whining from me. Again, this is an excellent read. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction, action, or military history.

Cornwall is obviously a military history buff, relishing the dates, companies, weapons, troop movements, locations, battles etc. of the period. If you're into that sort of thing, go hard. Moreover we're drenched in action - this is centred on major battles. And the action carries you along; the page-turning managed to keep me up to knock the book over in a few nights. In his following `historical note' Cornwall owns up to where he's bent things a little for the sake of his story:
"Purists will also be offended that Sharpe attacked Ciudad Rodrigo with the Third Division, and Badajoz with the Fourth, but it is the fate of fictional soldiers to be always where the fight is thickest even when that means a cavalier disregard for the make-up of divisions."
This reminds me of Patrick O'Brian, who I believe said that all the things that happen to his 18th Century RN hero did actually happen - but never to the same man. Books like these can be a far more enjoyable way of learning a bit of history, and both writers are prepared to paint some of the less admirable sides of `their' heroes and `their' army (who both go berserk in Sharpe's Company, butchering surrendering French soldiers once they've breached the wall at Badajoz).
Comparing the two military historical writers any further, however, can only put Cornwall in the shade. While Cornwall could contend that he's giving an accurate soldier's eye view - grim, ruthless - I found his characters one dimensional, something you couldn't say of O'Brian's Marturin or Aubrey. Indeed, Sharpe's right hand man Harper is barely even a cardboard invention: little John has simply changed his uniform, accent and century. O'Brian's characters often surprised me: it felt like the author had some insight into the journals and accounts he'd read from another age. Once I'd had their opening description Cornwall's characters never did - I felt more like I was reading someone who'd seen a lot of mid-day black and white movies (witness, for example, his massively stereotyped image of the coarse working class army wives). His heroine and his villain could have stepped out of pantomime.
For a purportedly historical novel this book is awash with melodramatic fictional conventions - and that bugs me more than if it were, say, thrown into an SF context based on the same historical events. I'd feel far less compelled to judge his W.E. Johns attitude to the largely faceless enemy or the glory of battle. Of course every book is contrived, but this feels so contrived (as opposed to crafted) - Sharpe will suffer several losses (no fault of his own) early in the book so that his eventual inevitable victory will taste all the sweeter. OK, OK, likewise Jack Aubrey, but there's so much else happening along the way. The devotion of Sharpe's men to their dashing leader feels so much more Hollywood than history, as, of course, his charmed ability to stand in a spray of bullets that can only ever touch the minor characters standing around him.
Maybe you could put aside the pretentions of authenticity (of character, not dates, events and places) and just enjoy the well researched settings and brutal victories. However even with some pretty generous suspension of disbelief parameters Cornwall's fairly central plot around the villainous Hawkeswill is internally stupid. A deranged (yet cunning) serial rapist-murderer, Sharpe's nemesis, who in previous books has given Sharpe overwhelming personal motivations to kill. Early in the book he gives us one more - he corners Sharpe's lover and attempts to rape and kill her. Sharpe and little John step in mid-attack and overpower him. Hawkeswill sternly vows his intention to rape and kill her at the earliest opportunity. Sharpe's assassin girlfriend offers to kill him. Harper begs for the task. Sharpe - who's bread and butter is killing - says he wants to kill him. Yet ... like those who oppose Batman and James Bond, for some reason these seasoned executioners inexplicably can't bring themselves to simply fire a round or insert a knife. Sharpe's reasoning, "I want to do it publicly," out of some sort of supposedly noble desire to thereby purge the evil Hawkeswill has visited on so many - is nothing short of ridiculous. The result is that Hawkeswill is simply turned free - by the hero - to torture, rape and kill more innocents and provide suspense. In order to set up the climax of Sharpe having to win the race past the walls of Badajoz to rescue his defacto wife and child from the lurking killer/rapist, Cornwall expects his readers to have his supposedly super-resourceful hero blithely let him walk around untouched - without even bothering to attempt to kill him. It's far worse than the insufferably procrastinating Hamlet, as Sharpe is supposed to be an unusually able plotter and killer. This absurd contradiction bugged me (did you pick that?), and got more and more stupid as the book went on - to the supreme stupidity of Hawkeswill getting away yet again (from three armed experienced killers in the one room) to lurk about in the next novel! Hawkeswill, in contrast, actually had the intelligence to know who his enemies were, to carefully observe them and take rational and devious measures to bring them down (such as the not uncommon fragging. That being said, it is also stupid that Hawkeswill's never been fragged).

OK, sure, if Cornwall was wanting to write cartoon farce ("Next time, Gadget, next time"; "Ah, Von-Stalhein - we meet again"), this is acceptable, nay, expected. But hard-bitten, carefully researched historical fiction? Only as hard bitten as Georgette Heyer. He doesn't have to write something as bleak as All Quiet on the Western Front, but he should at least be informed by it. Alternatively he could write `historical fiction' like Alexandre Dumas, where the characters are deliberately far larger than life and we can relish the greater emphasis on the `fiction' without the troubling demands of trying to be essentially `historical' within precisely documented specific events.

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 today that is a rare and marvelous thing.

I've eagerly poured through this great series, but was sorely disappointed to see a re-appearance of Sgt. Hawkeswill. His presence ads nothing to this book, other than a great unbelievable diversion.

Sharpe mutters about his life-long desire to kill his arch nemesis Sgt. Hawkeswill at least every 200 pages of every book in the series. Then Sharpe, who has not hesitated to kill before, finds Hawkeswill alone in a barn raping his wife, and then decides to let him go?????? This is the same man that murdered 500 innocent people just so he could leave a city, and now he suddenly wants an honorable public death for for his arch enemy??? Cornwell has made Hawkeswill into the ultimate evil nemesis, and he is just too evil and too lucky to be believed. Having Hawkeswill again and again dance around Sharpe and his friend Sgt. Harper makes Sharpe's other exploits all that more unbelievable. How could anyone that is so easily fooled by the insane Hawkeswill accomplish all the heroics described in this and other books? Here is a guy that tracked one enemy through mountains, rivers, etc. for weeks, just for beating him up, but when he finds Hawkeswill raping his wife (for the second time), threating to kill his child, after Hawkeswill has already killed his good friend Cpt. Knowles, and had Sgt. Harper flogged and demoted, he lets Hawkeswill jump out the window without even a chase???? The Sharpe character wanders all over the place from a vile evil killing machine to a goof-balled mush-mellon.

Fortunately, we have not had to contend with Hawkeswill for a long time in the series, and hopefully we will not see him again.

Why can't Cornwell tell us how Hakeswill escaped the pit of cobras and other snakes Sharped pushed him into naked in India. He never did mention how he survived. Also he let the bastard live again? When is Cornwell going to give us satisfaction on this monster. I am glad Sharpe married Teresa and that he now has a baby girl. And what about his captaincy? Cornwell sure makes us grovel for more. On to the next Sharpe book.

I'm a little more than halfway through Bernard Cornwell's 'Sharpe' series and so far 'Sharpe's Company' is my favorite. This novel has Richard Sharpe fighting for his command and his family while waging war against the French held fortress of Badajoz. And as though this task wasn't daunting enough, Sharpe's nemisis Obidiah Hakeswill returns to settle an old score. Consistently entertaining, Cornwall's attention to detail is nothing less than awe-inspiring. I would highly recommend 'Sharpe's Comapany' to anyone interested in military fiction or to lovers of great action and suspence novels.

I've read all the Sharpe series books several times over and always find them enjoyable. It's difficult to rate only one of Bernard Cornwell's books. He is, without a doubt, one of the finest authors I've read. His writing style is so riveting, it's hard to put the book down. I appreciate his diligence to preserve the history of each major event. If I could speak with him, I'd say, "Well done, ol' chap!".

my dad got me into the absolutly fabulous SHARPE novels. cornwell really knows how to create a character that you want to read about over and over again. i love a good war novel but i never had an intrest in the napoleonic wars befor i read my first Sharpe novel. i have also seen the moive's staring Sean Bean who portrais richard sharpe beautifully. i would recommend any sharpe novel to anyone who loves anything that has to do with war.