Sharpe's Devil (Book #6)

Sharpe's Devil is the very last book in the Sharpe series. I'm going to miss those books. Of course, I can always read them again, and Cornwell has, I believe, three historical series I still haven't read yet. (I've read all the Starbucks, of which he needs to hurry up and write more, plus the standalones Gallows Thief, Stonehenge, and Redcoat.) But the Sharpes are in "my" era, so I have an affinity for them I don't expect to find with his Dark Age and medieval series. So I have to mourn a little.

Devil is set in 1820-21. Sharpe has settled down as a farmer in Normandy. He's happy with the woman he unfortunately can't marry because he can't afford to divorce the wife who stole his money and ran off with another man toward the end of the series, they have two children, and all they could ask for is a little more money to make improvements on the farm. Harper, similarly, is keeping a tavern in Dublin with his Isabella and raising four sons. But when an old friend is in trouble, they're persuaded to sail off to the rescue in Chile, along the way meeting Napoleon on St. Helena and Thomas Cochrane, the rogue naval officer Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey is largely based upon. It's a good read, but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the Napoleonic War stories, possibly because I know very little about the Chilean Revolution--I seem to remember filling "Bernardo O'Higgins" into a blank on a sixth grade test, but that's about it--and so couldn't place it into context quite as well.

But the series, overall, gets a solid "A" from me, with the best volumes--Triumph, Trafalgar, Waterloo--scoring an A+. I'll miss you on my to-be-read pile, Lt. Col. Sharpe!

Pirate Freedom (Book #5)

Pirate Freedom (Gene Wolfe, 2007) is nearly impossible to characterize. It's a time travel sea adventure (how the time travel happened is never explained) with a protagonist who's the son of a mafia boss but is intended for the priesthood...until he's flung back in time, where he becomes a rather spiritual pirate...and is eventually flung back forward, where he resumes his old life as a tough yet compassionate priest. It's so crazy it shouldn't work, but it does (though it was a bit slow at the start and it's sometimes tough to keep track of the characters).

As an aside, this is the second book I've read this year that had illustrations--in this case little sketches above the chapter headers. Must somehow arrange to become an author with enough popularity and influence to get illustrated someday. Selling a first book would be a start...

Gentlemen of the Road (Book #2)

I've never read anything by Michael Chabon before, but the subject of Gentlemen of the Road (2007)--Jewish adventurers on the Silk Road about 1000 years ago--made me pick it up. It's a quick, engaging read, a somewhat stylized and deliberately over-the-top swashbuckler. It would film beautifully.

Chabon's working title was Jews with Swords, which just charms the heck out of me. And I'm jealous of him, because the book has old-fashioned illustrations--you know, the ones with full-page drawings of a scene from the book and an identifying line from the text? If I'm ever a famous and powerful author, I'm going to get that in some of my books, because it's just so retro cool.