Excellent historical fiction, my favourite Sharpe book yet! Having read the first five books I was eager to continue on reading in the series! Sharpe's Rifles starts off with an atmospheric and exciting opening and develops into a real page-turning Napoleonic adventure with battles, deception and mystery. Really enjoyable read, Cornwell is in a class of his one when it comes to historical fiction.

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. This is a good historical action novel with good characters.