Series: Sharpe #3

This installment describes the taking of the so far unbeaten fortress of Gawilghur by Wellington’s army. Sharpe is a newly made ensign in a new company and having a hard time of it because he doesn’t feel like he fits in anywhere. The description of how the fortress was defeated was compelling, but boy was it bloody. Admittedly the British didn’t take massive losses and the book wasn’t trying to be overly gory but war certainly makes a mess. At least no one go beheaded by a cannonball in this one. Oh, and I’m impressed at the sheer amount of ammunition the British must have been lugging around.

I read this for booklikes-opoly square Frontierland 2 “Read a book with a main character who knows how to handle a gun” and Sharpe definitely fits this category. It’s a musket but he’s skilled with its use as both a firearm and with its bayonet. At 372 pages (I’m including the historical note), it counts as another $6 for my bank, giving me a total of $263.

This is also the hundredth book I’ve finished reading this year.

Previous update:

207 of 372 pages

'I knew you could beat a jetti in a fair fight.'

'I beat three at once in Seringapatam,' Sharpe said, 'but I don't know as it was a fair fight. I'm not much in favour of fair fights. I like them to be unfair. Fair fights are for gentlemen who don't know any better.'

'Which is why you gave the sword to the jetti,' Sevajee observed drily.

'I knew he'd make a bollocks of it.'

Jettis are strongmen who kill people with their bare hands. Sharpe fought with a spear.

(Edited with the rest of my turn)

Starting from Just Visiting Jail:

Using the random number generator:

3. Let a BL friend choose your next ride! Post your plight, and see where the first person sends you!

So first person to comment gets to tell me which square I'm going to...

JL's Bibliomania chose Frontierland 2 for me, which is actually a brand new square that I have yet to visit.

I may visit Sharpe's world for this one (see, maybe I don't need to resort to spaceships!):

And since doubles:

Another brand new square for me! I have a fair amount of choice for this one, but I think I'll either go with City of Miracles or All is Fair:

I still get to roll again after this because of doubles, right?

Irene is sent to retrieve a book from a chaos-infested alternate world for The Library with the help of her assistant/trainee Kai. She belongs to a secret organization called The Invisible Library that collects books and stores them in a massive library complex located somehow adjacent to the many alternate worlds to which its operatives may travel. These alternate worlds all apparently have the same physical laws but they range from the more orderly worlds where magic isn’t a thing to the more chaotic worlds where you can encounter vampires and werewolves and somehow this leads to more steampunk-style technology.

The concept here is interesting but I never really connected with the book or its characters. There’s a revelation about a dragon that has little impact on the reader because the reader just doesn’t have the information to know why Irene reacts the way she does. It misses, the mark, basically. There are also several plot points that feel like the characters are required to be a bit slow on the uptake (the twists weren’t all that surprising) or it felt like a plot hole until it was finally explained (to be fair, these things were mostly explained).

The other thing that bugged me was the question of timeframes. The library has been around for at least several hundred years and possibly for several thousand. There seem to be a lot of Victorian-era steampunk worlds and there’s nothing to say that we’re not modern day or later (cell phones are a possible technology for the worlds). If we’re modern day or later (to give the library more “time” to exist), why are so many worlds “stuck” in what feels like earlier times? Do they actually get stuck technologically based on the level of chaos in them? Are there futuristic more orderly worlds? If so, has more time passed or did technology just progress faster? These questions kept bugging me all throughout the book and the origin of the library is a mystery. I’m not sure if I’d be disappointed with the answer.

Basically, this book just wasn’t quite fun enough to warrant a full three stars so I’m sticking with 2.5. I am somewhat curious to find out more about The Library so I may read the next book although I’m not certain I’ll actually get any answers, so I won’t be rushing out to get find it.

I read this for booklikes-opoly square Frontierland 4 “Read a book where…the letters in the title can be used to spell RIVER”: The Invisible Library. Since this is the second time I’ve landed on this square since the shake-up, I get a location multiplier of 1.5 for this 328 page book, which gives me another $9 for my bank.

New Bank Balance: $214

Previous Updates:

16 %

64 %

Starting from Adventureland 27....doubles!

I finally landed on a square with a location multiplier (this is the second time I landed here since the shake-up). I'm probably going to go with Made to Kill by Adam Christopher since the author's name contains all of the letters in SPACE: Adam ChriStoPhEr.

I get a location multiplier for this one too (2nd time again). Rather than try to figure out whether any of the characters would be travelling by boat, I think I'll just go with one of these two:

SILVER ON THE ROAD

THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY

Current Bank Balance: $196