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Title: Highly Dubious Authorship
Review: This is easily the worst of the Sharpe novels. I've read every one of Bernard Cornwell's books, most of them several times, and I frankly don't believe that he was the main author of this one. The plot is lame, the action unconvincing, and most of all the prose is stilted and inappropriate, lacking almost all of the drive and energy of ALL the other books. It just doesn't read like Cornwell at all; the action is nothing like what we are used to, the characters lack conviction, and Sharpe and Harper simply don't act, sound or respond like the two men we know.My guess is that an editor was responsible for most of the work. You can write an addition to a series, use all the same characters, but that's not enough. Examples are to be seen in LeBeau's splendid Buckskin novels and those after the first 12 - check these out, you won't be sorry - Ruth Plumly Thompson's Oz works; and at least one of the Travis McGee books, which just doesn't ring true. Anyone feel the same way?
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