Sharpe's Sword
So the other day when I was bitching about Sharpe's Eagle (the book), I somehow forgot to rant about the thing that most annoyed me as I read it: the shifting points of view.
soundingsea had a nice post about this the other day, and I second it wholeheartedly. It's absolutely impossible to get absorbed in a story when you're constantly having to stop and shift your mental perspective as the writer jumps among points of view. Bernard Cornwell does this egregiously in Sharpe's Eagle, which is why I just could not get into it and felt consistently removed; I felt like myself reading a book instead of like Sharpe in 1809. Not good.
Sharpe's Eagle is just not written very well. It's full of the mistakes common to beginning writers (passive voice, weird phrasing, bad editing, lack of important detail, irrational fear of pronouns, one dimensional characters, etc.).
I said yesterday that I wouldn't be reading another Sharpe book, but then I started feeling bad about being so negative, and I wondered why the Amazon reviews were so positive, so I decided to give it one more shot and picked up a later book in the series, Sharpe's Sword.
I got it on my way home from work yesterday, around 7pm, started reading it at 8pm, stopped for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and then picked the novel back up and finished it around 3am. (It's been so long since I've devoured a book in one sitting! I missed that.)
Sharpe's Sword was actually very good. Cornwell's writing matured immensely between the two novels, and so many of the beginner's mistakes he exhibited in the first were nonexistent or toned down here. (You see this in fanfic a lot, too--those writers who show up writing on the bad-to-mediocre side, but get better and better until you find yourself reading their fic one day and proclaiming brilliance. I give major kudos to those who've left their early efforts up on the web so that the rest of us can see that they too were once mere mortals.)
I can see now why people like Sharpe so much, and where the TV series picked up the depth that wasn't apparent in Sharpe's Eagle.
The most promising thing in Sharpe's Eagle was the darkness we were allowed to see in Sharpe's character; he murders a terrified man who has thrown down his weapons, he enjoys it, and he feels no guilt. Of course, you can understand why he does it (the man had beaten and raped Sharpe's girlfriend) but it's not something a pure white-hat hero would do.
Sharpe's Sword picks up on this trait and explores it in far more depth. It also presents an array of complex characters(!), a well-constructed (if still fairly predictable) plot, and has great thematic continuity.
I loved Sharpe in this novel, even as I found more things to dislike about him. It's his flaws, the non-Mary Sue traits, that make me adore him. (I did think he was Mary-Sue-ish in the first one; always right, always winning, never really getting hurt. Very James Bond, who is of course also a total Mary Sue.)
I love that Sharpe was surly toward La Marquesa because her wealth made him feel inadequate. I love that he totally sucked at riding a horse. I love that he cheated on his wife--thought about it, knew it was wrong, and did it anyway. I loved how human his emotional reactions were, and how he didn't always get his man and didn't always know what was going on. I love that the novel is all about him screwing up, letting Leroux go, being manipulated by the enemy, nearly getting killed. Because he's smart, and he figures a lot out, and he's basically sympathetic, but he's not perfect and the author doesn't try to make Sharpe look like a saint; he's allowed to be a flawed human.
What else? I thought La Marquesa was a great female character. She was complicated and dark and even though she found herself falling for Sharpe, she didn't change sides or give up her people out of feelings for him. I liked Spears, a screw-up and a traitor who was still an incredibly likable and sympathetic character. Even the supporting cast was well-drawn; Hogan and Harper were more nuanced than before. The actual El Mirador was interesting enough, and Connelly, keeper of the death room, was a gem. The only one dimensional character, really, was Leroux, who was sort of your typical sociopathic scary villain, but he served his purpose.
It doesn't hurt that this book totally hit my bulletproof kink. I think I figured it out. See, I like hurt/comfort, but really I could do without the comfort. I've been wondering if this makes me a total sadist, but no, I think what I like is a character overcoming every imaginable horrible odd by sheer willpower. The "comfort" part screws this up because then it becomes all about the character recovering thanks to their dependence on someone else.
This is why Intervention is the BtVS episode that hooked me on Spike. Yeah, Fool for Love was great, Crush was heart-wrenching, but in Intervention Spike fully expected to die, yet he refused to give up Dawn, and through sheer force of will he snarkily resisted Glory, came up with a crafty escape plan that meant unimaginable pain for himself, and escaped on his own, all with no expectation of any kind of reward or comfort whatsoever. That's when I totally fell for him.
"The Slayer is going to kick your skanky, lopsided ass back to whatever place would take a cheap, whorish, fashion victim ex-god like you."
*adores*
So anyway, that's what I like about Sharpe in this book. He should totally die, but instead he survives through sheer force of will. (Well, and Harper's magic sword--Sharpe/Harper OTP--but really he doesn't know about that until he's already getting better.)
I love the death room scenes, chapter 14, with the recurring phrase "Sharpe swore he would not die." This book is just so much better written than the first one. For example:
Sharpe breathed in short, shallow gasps, and he swore he would not die. He tried to blank the pain out, but he could not, and he tried to remember men who had come out of the death room alive. He could not. He could only think of his enemy, Sergeant Hakeswill, who had lived through a hanging, and Sharpe swore he would not die.
[... and he's whispering to Connelly, in the night and dark among all the dying men and rats]
'I'm not going to die.' Each word was soft, each almost edged with a sob.
And then here's another example of why I love Sharpe in this book. He's a soldier, which is something towards which I (this vegan liberal atheist feminist pacifist) am not particularly inclined to be sympathetic, but then he totally wins me over with this great honest, kind of existentialist motivation:
He was a soldier because there was nothing else for him to be. He had discovered all those years ago that he could do the job and do it well, and now he could not imagine another life.
Her eyes were curious, huge and curious. 'What do you fight for?'
He shook his head, not knowing what to tell her. If he said 'England' it would sound pompous, and Sharpe had a suspicion that if he had been born French then he would have fought for France with as much skill and ferocity as he served England. The Colours? Perhaps, because they were a soldier's pride, and pride is valuable to a soldier, but he supposed the real answer was that he fought for himself to stop himself sliding back into the nothingness where he began. He met her eyes. 'My friends.' It was as good an answer as he could think of.
And then there's all these great recurring motifs, interesting themes, and just nifty turns of phrase. There's La Marquesa's recurring question as to whether Sharpe likes killing; we get the complicated answer demonstrated later in the book: he certainly likes killing Leroux, and he hates having to kill Spears. The writing is far more subtle; I love that in Leroux's second escape scene, when he nearly kills Sharpe, the chapter ends with a simple "The Cathedral clock struck three." We know from earlier that means Leroux has gotten away.
It's not perfect, of course. Some of the flaws of the first one pop up; there's even some shifting POVs (but far, far less; this one is almost entirely Sharpe's point of view, and when it does shift it's usually with some kind of chapter break). One thing that did annoy me was when Harper was making a new sword for Sharpe, and it was a metaphor for how he was helping Sharpe back to health. It was a neat little thing and then the author went and ruined it with "It was as if in working on the sword he was working on Sharpe himself." Gee, ya think? :P
Of course, I loved the Sharpe/Harper friendship, which is absolutely lovely. I'm a big sucker for close friendship stories, far more than romances... (though I don't mind if things get slashy). How cool was it, with Sharpe calling for "Patrick" when he's near death, and Harper digging up the graves desperately trying to find Sharpe, and then Sharpe keeping the rough sword Harper made for him instead of the fancy one he'd coveted before. There was a line that totally got to me, but I can't find it now, about them each knowing what the other was thinking and basically communicating nonverbally; I love that. It's so rare and so precious.
(ETA: That line is when Sharpe's dying and thinking about being alone, and mostly missing Harper:
"No Harper. No slow grin, no shared thorughts without words, no more laughter.")
Christ, I'm having flashbacks to 11th grade. I hope Mrs. Lake-Daniels would be proud. When did analyzing a book in my spare time become a hobby?
Oh, and I totally did not spend my evening reading Sharpe/Methos porn. In case you were wondering. :P
soundingsea had a nice post about this the other day, and I second it wholeheartedly. It's absolutely impossible to get absorbed in a story when you're constantly having to stop and shift your mental perspective as the writer jumps among points of view. Bernard Cornwell does this egregiously in Sharpe's Eagle, which is why I just could not get into it and felt consistently removed; I felt like myself reading a book instead of like Sharpe in 1809. Not good.
Sharpe's Eagle is just not written very well. It's full of the mistakes common to beginning writers (passive voice, weird phrasing, bad editing, lack of important detail, irrational fear of pronouns, one dimensional characters, etc.).
I said yesterday that I wouldn't be reading another Sharpe book, but then I started feeling bad about being so negative, and I wondered why the Amazon reviews were so positive, so I decided to give it one more shot and picked up a later book in the series, Sharpe's Sword.
I got it on my way home from work yesterday, around 7pm, started reading it at 8pm, stopped for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and then picked the novel back up and finished it around 3am. (It's been so long since I've devoured a book in one sitting! I missed that.)
Sharpe's Sword was actually very good. Cornwell's writing matured immensely between the two novels, and so many of the beginner's mistakes he exhibited in the first were nonexistent or toned down here. (You see this in fanfic a lot, too--those writers who show up writing on the bad-to-mediocre side, but get better and better until you find yourself reading their fic one day and proclaiming brilliance. I give major kudos to those who've left their early efforts up on the web so that the rest of us can see that they too were once mere mortals.)
I can see now why people like Sharpe so much, and where the TV series picked up the depth that wasn't apparent in Sharpe's Eagle.
The most promising thing in Sharpe's Eagle was the darkness we were allowed to see in Sharpe's character; he murders a terrified man who has thrown down his weapons, he enjoys it, and he feels no guilt. Of course, you can understand why he does it (the man had beaten and raped Sharpe's girlfriend) but it's not something a pure white-hat hero would do.
Sharpe's Sword picks up on this trait and explores it in far more depth. It also presents an array of complex characters(!), a well-constructed (if still fairly predictable) plot, and has great thematic continuity.
I loved Sharpe in this novel, even as I found more things to dislike about him. It's his flaws, the non-Mary Sue traits, that make me adore him. (I did think he was Mary-Sue-ish in the first one; always right, always winning, never really getting hurt. Very James Bond, who is of course also a total Mary Sue.)
I love that Sharpe was surly toward La Marquesa because her wealth made him feel inadequate. I love that he totally sucked at riding a horse. I love that he cheated on his wife--thought about it, knew it was wrong, and did it anyway. I loved how human his emotional reactions were, and how he didn't always get his man and didn't always know what was going on. I love that the novel is all about him screwing up, letting Leroux go, being manipulated by the enemy, nearly getting killed. Because he's smart, and he figures a lot out, and he's basically sympathetic, but he's not perfect and the author doesn't try to make Sharpe look like a saint; he's allowed to be a flawed human.
What else? I thought La Marquesa was a great female character. She was complicated and dark and even though she found herself falling for Sharpe, she didn't change sides or give up her people out of feelings for him. I liked Spears, a screw-up and a traitor who was still an incredibly likable and sympathetic character. Even the supporting cast was well-drawn; Hogan and Harper were more nuanced than before. The actual El Mirador was interesting enough, and Connelly, keeper of the death room, was a gem. The only one dimensional character, really, was Leroux, who was sort of your typical sociopathic scary villain, but he served his purpose.
It doesn't hurt that this book totally hit my bulletproof kink. I think I figured it out. See, I like hurt/comfort, but really I could do without the comfort. I've been wondering if this makes me a total sadist, but no, I think what I like is a character overcoming every imaginable horrible odd by sheer willpower. The "comfort" part screws this up because then it becomes all about the character recovering thanks to their dependence on someone else.
This is why Intervention is the BtVS episode that hooked me on Spike. Yeah, Fool for Love was great, Crush was heart-wrenching, but in Intervention Spike fully expected to die, yet he refused to give up Dawn, and through sheer force of will he snarkily resisted Glory, came up with a crafty escape plan that meant unimaginable pain for himself, and escaped on his own, all with no expectation of any kind of reward or comfort whatsoever. That's when I totally fell for him.
"The Slayer is going to kick your skanky, lopsided ass back to whatever place would take a cheap, whorish, fashion victim ex-god like you."
*adores*
So anyway, that's what I like about Sharpe in this book. He should totally die, but instead he survives through sheer force of will. (Well, and Harper's magic sword--Sharpe/Harper OTP--but really he doesn't know about that until he's already getting better.)
I love the death room scenes, chapter 14, with the recurring phrase "Sharpe swore he would not die." This book is just so much better written than the first one. For example:
Sharpe breathed in short, shallow gasps, and he swore he would not die. He tried to blank the pain out, but he could not, and he tried to remember men who had come out of the death room alive. He could not. He could only think of his enemy, Sergeant Hakeswill, who had lived through a hanging, and Sharpe swore he would not die.
[... and he's whispering to Connelly, in the night and dark among all the dying men and rats]
'I'm not going to die.' Each word was soft, each almost edged with a sob.
And then here's another example of why I love Sharpe in this book. He's a soldier, which is something towards which I (this vegan liberal atheist feminist pacifist) am not particularly inclined to be sympathetic, but then he totally wins me over with this great honest, kind of existentialist motivation:
He was a soldier because there was nothing else for him to be. He had discovered all those years ago that he could do the job and do it well, and now he could not imagine another life.
Her eyes were curious, huge and curious. 'What do you fight for?'
He shook his head, not knowing what to tell her. If he said 'England' it would sound pompous, and Sharpe had a suspicion that if he had been born French then he would have fought for France with as much skill and ferocity as he served England. The Colours? Perhaps, because they were a soldier's pride, and pride is valuable to a soldier, but he supposed the real answer was that he fought for himself to stop himself sliding back into the nothingness where he began. He met her eyes. 'My friends.' It was as good an answer as he could think of.
And then there's all these great recurring motifs, interesting themes, and just nifty turns of phrase. There's La Marquesa's recurring question as to whether Sharpe likes killing; we get the complicated answer demonstrated later in the book: he certainly likes killing Leroux, and he hates having to kill Spears. The writing is far more subtle; I love that in Leroux's second escape scene, when he nearly kills Sharpe, the chapter ends with a simple "The Cathedral clock struck three." We know from earlier that means Leroux has gotten away.
It's not perfect, of course. Some of the flaws of the first one pop up; there's even some shifting POVs (but far, far less; this one is almost entirely Sharpe's point of view, and when it does shift it's usually with some kind of chapter break). One thing that did annoy me was when Harper was making a new sword for Sharpe, and it was a metaphor for how he was helping Sharpe back to health. It was a neat little thing and then the author went and ruined it with "It was as if in working on the sword he was working on Sharpe himself." Gee, ya think? :P
Of course, I loved the Sharpe/Harper friendship, which is absolutely lovely. I'm a big sucker for close friendship stories, far more than romances... (though I don't mind if things get slashy). How cool was it, with Sharpe calling for "Patrick" when he's near death, and Harper digging up the graves desperately trying to find Sharpe, and then Sharpe keeping the rough sword Harper made for him instead of the fancy one he'd coveted before. There was a line that totally got to me, but I can't find it now, about them each knowing what the other was thinking and basically communicating nonverbally; I love that. It's so rare and so precious.
(ETA: That line is when Sharpe's dying and thinking about being alone, and mostly missing Harper:
"No Harper. No slow grin, no shared thorughts without words, no more laughter.")
Christ, I'm having flashbacks to 11th grade. I hope Mrs. Lake-Daniels would be proud. When did analyzing a book in my spare time become a hobby?
Oh, and I totally did not spend my evening reading Sharpe/Methos porn. In case you were wondering. :P