All the Sharpe books are wonderful. None should be rated less than 4 stars. As you can tell I am a big fan.

I read a few of bernard cornwell's books after reading his first arthurian novel, winter king. Now I loved the Arthur trilogy but although I enjoyed some of his other books I stopped after the first Sharpe prequel Sharpe's tiger. This was good. Well written and researched making good use of historical detail. Reminiscent of C. S. Forester's work, the Sharpe books start well. The publication order is very different from the reading order. I did find that after reading a few Sharpe books in a row there was a slight feeling of I've read this before. I found this one a bit harder going. It's still well written and the characters are still good but I wasn't keen on the plot. Even though this was the second published book by the time I got to this one I found myself thinking is there no other soldier in the war they can rely on? Sharpe seems to be everywhere! More on Sharpe's tiger on that subject. This isn't a bad book and I enjoyed it to a degree.