Books like Sharpe's Sword

[7/10]None of the Sharpe books is bad. They present history in a thrilling, heroic manner following the career of Richard Sharpe, a British soldier during the Napoleonic Wars who rises through the ranks thanks to his courage and martial prowess. I must confess though that after reading a fair number of them they tend to blend together in a 'paint-by-numbers' fashion. Cornwell has a winning recipe for cooking his historical romances that he he applies time and time again: Sharpe is the perfect soldier. Sharpe comes across a devious adversary. Sharpe meets a beautiful woman and seduces her. Sharpe gets in trouble with his superior officers. Sharpe finally distinguishes himself in one of the major conflicts of the war, almost single-handedly turning the tide of battle. Richard Sharpe was good at this. He had been doing it for nineteen years, his whole adult life, more, indeed, than half his life, and he wondered if he would ever be good for anything else. Could he make things with his hands? Could he earn a living by growing things, or was he just this? A killer on a battlefield, legitimised by war for which, he knew, he had a talent. I need something to distinguish between the different episodes, in my quest to read all the Sharpe books chronologically. A new reader can start anywhere without a problem, since the author himself didn't publish the books in chronological order and he took care to make each one viable as a stand-alone adventure. In the present instance, my bookmarks are the sword from the title and the city of Salamanca. It was a weapon of exquisite craftmanship, a straight-bladed, heavy cavalry sword made by Kligenthal as were most of the cavalry blades, but this sword had been made specially for Leroux by the finest craftsman at Kligenthal. It was longer than most swords, heavier too, for Leroux was a tall, strong man. The blade was beautiful, a sheen of steel in the dappled green light of the wood, and the hilt and guard were made of the same steel. The handle was bound by silver wire, the sword's sole concession to decoration, but despite its plainness, the weapon proclaimed itself as a beautiful, exquisitely balanced killing blade.To hold that sword, Delmas thought, must be to know what King Arthur felt when he slid Excalibur, smooth as grey silk, from the churchyard stone. Sharpe covets the beautiful weapon from the first moment he lays eyes on it, in the hands of a captured French officer. The quest is started when this officer, a dangerous killing machine named Colonel Leroux, breaks his parole, kills a couple of Sharpe's friends and escapes into the besieged city of Salamanca. The hunt for the sword is on!The city of Salamanca is well worth a visit today, and not only in order to see the site of an old battleground. Cornwell did his research well (as usual), and makes it easier for the reader to go sightseeing in the old university quarter, in the magnificent central plaza, in the palaces of the wealthy and in the local monasteries. The action moves briskly between these locations, culminating with an assault on three fortified positions within the town. An important sidequest deals with a hunt for the best English spy in the peninsula, a secret agent nicknamed El Mirador. Another sidequest deals with the usual love interest for Sharpe, the beautiful and rich Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba. The competition here comes in the guise of a dissolute Irish noble, Captain Lord Jack Spears, one of the 'official' spies in Wellington's army, the kind that goes behind enemy lines in uniform.The final confrontation of the Salamanca campaign takes place outside the city limits and is one of the largest and bloodiest so far in the series. Cornwell is in his element here, painting a clear picture of the opposing forces and of the deciding large scale maneuvers, filling in the big picture with detailed accounts of individual acts of valor. He is still favoring the British side with most of the praise, and I guess I need to find a French author if I want to discover what the French think about the whole Spanish campaign. For now Wellington gets the lion's share of the glory.Sharpe comes out well out of the scramble, not surprisingly since I know how many more books are left in the series. The author did put him through the mangler here to a higher degree than usual (view spoiler)[ He was left for dead after being shot in the lower abdomen (hide spoiler)]