"new Sharpe novel with mistakes" Topic

Just spotted a new Sharpe novel with the title Sharpe's Command. However, judging by the reviews the author has made some silly blunders, such as Sharpe having an incorrect rank going by the timeline and a character alive who had been killed in another book (or the other way around? LOL) Anyway, whatever, it is on my list.

Thanks for the reminder. My library has it on order.

I am somewhere in the middle of the series, it's a every once in a while read

But then, Flashman was a braggart and a scoundrel and would not have been above slipping a few falsehoods into his memoirs, and/or may simply have forgotten or misremembered things as he grew older. That is the beauty of a fictitious first person narrative presented as a memoir; the author can always claim his errors were, in fact, intentional to show the narrator's flaws.
Cornwell can't do that with Sharpe.

It is too late now, but I always hoped that George MacDonald Fraser would write Flashmans's memoires ('Dawns and Departures of a Soldier's Life') so that we could see him in the same way that his public saw him and made him a hero. It would be a great counterpoint to the novels themselves.

Fraser had no intention of describing Flashman's role in the American Civil War. In a 2002 interview he said, "to me, the American Civil War is a colossal bore. It was a rotten war, it's been done to death and I'm not terribly interested. An American wrote to me urging me to write it, saying it had to be the high point of Flashman's career. I wrote back saying: 'Son, it's a foreign sideshow. The Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, these were the important things in Flashman's life. Your civil war? He was so disinterested that he fought on both sides'."

Odd that there are that many reviews out there. It isn't available for sale until April 2024.

Published 10th October in UK

Ah.

My copy arrived today. No doubt Sharpe will train up some useless warriors into firing their rifles or muskets four rounds a minute, the French will attack in mass and be destroyed with some sort of homemade explosive device made from stuff found in the kitchen and at least one lady will fall for Sharpe! LOL

Still looking forward to reading it though.

I will forgive anything involving Sharpe, for the seconds in that TV series, must be 20 years ago plus, where Sean Bean is faced with Liz Hurley with her rig pulled down to her waist and just presents his compliments. That showed presence of mind and style, when most of us would have lost control of our masseter muscles.

She was a strapping lass too, who would pass any pencil test. But these days one must not suggest that.