Fascinating account of colonial warfare, hard to believe such an outnumbered force could achieve victory. The details are breathtaking.
The first half of the book only merits three stars, but the second half is worth five, so we'll call it four stars for the whole thing. ( )

Sharpe's Triumph is the second, chronologically, of the Richard Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell. This is the second of the three books tracing Sharpe's experiences in India.

Coming four years after Sharpe's promotion to sergeant following the successful siege of Seringapatam, we find Sharpe jerked away from his comfortable existence in that city, and accompanying Col. McCandless, an intelligence officer we met in the Tippoo Sultan's dungenons, to capture an East India Company turncoat serving with the Mahratta confederacy's army.

The bloody story takes us through the Battle of Assaye, one of Arthur Wellesley's more sanguinary victories, fought with a lot of guts against a much larger foe.

Two of the highlights of the book are our further encounters with that malevelant bottomfeeder, Obadiah Hakeswill. This time he's engineered a dishonest plot to arrest Sharpe on a trumped up charge so he can bump him off and take the jewels Sharpe looted from the Tippoo Sultan.

This story also holds the incident in which Sharpe is promoted from the ranks for saving Wellesley's life. It is some intense, exciting action.

Sharpe's Triumph is a good read, fun stuff, a great addition to your Sharpe library. ( )

An excellent sequel to Sharpe's Tiger. ( )

Sharpe's Triumph, which is chronologically the second book in the Richard Sharpe series (though the 14th published), is a good, bare bones example of the virtues of Bernard Cornwell's writing in this series: while it doesn't contain as much information about the Indian states (or the literary crossover "in-joke") as its immediate predecessor, Sharpe's Tiger: Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Seringapatam, 1799, it does deftly and compellingly sketch out military battles on a large, medium, and one-on-one scale. Cornwell's description of the tactics is strong enough to make the poorest strategic game-player feel like an armchair Napoleon (or, better, an armchair Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, the preeminent "real-world" figure featured here -- who, after all, did put paid to Boney's dreams of empire), while his action scenes are vivid enough to make even the clumsiest and weakest reader wistfully yearn for a chance to prove himself on "the field of honor," even with all of the gore and grue. Sharpe's quest -- to find a traitorous East Indian Company officer, in the company of a Scots colonel of "John Company's" army -- is paralleled by the quest of his nemesis, Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill, to (officially...) clap him in the chokey. If one is left wanting a bit more of the Mahratta (the spelling used here; also known as "Maratha") point of view of the Second Anglo-Marathta War (1803-05), that's really not the purview of the Sharpe novels; a balanced treatment of the Indian POV would've resulted in a novel easily twice the length of the one at hand (291 pps., including a 3-paged historical afterword), while not necessarily increasing the enjoyment to be had. The fact that Cornwell does not elide over what happens to the human body, in or out of uniform, when men wage war should serve as all the counterweight that a thinking reader needs to balance the skirl of bagpipes and the tattoo of drums. ( )

The Battle of Assaye, September 1803

India 1803, Richard Sharpe surviving a murderous act of treason vows to hunt down the turncoat, a bitter English officer by the name of Major Dobb. Sir Arthur Wellesley with Richard Sharpe at his side enter into the fiercest battle of their career, the bloody battle of Assaye.

Sharpe's Triumph is a riveting story of betrayal and revenge. The description of the battles, the deployment of the troupes and their progress leave you with the horrific feeling of being there, hearing the thunder of the cannons, smelling the gun powder in the air, the swishing of swords and the eerie sounds of battle. The military encounters are well paced with enough details to immerse the reader into Sharpe's world, a blend of military adventure and historical details.

As main characters we have Sergeant Sharpe, a dramatic and trustworthy soldier and Sergeant Obediah Hakes who is continually conspiring against him. Arthur Wellesley with the help of his troupe is able to outmaneuver and outfight a much larger enemy.

On the other side as head of the mercenary forces is Anthony Pohlmann, a cheerful Hanoverian rogue, with Major William Dobb at his side equally determine to drive the British out of the continent.

We find a panoply of other factional and real characters throughout.

This second novel in the India Trilogy is a satisfying tale well worth reading. ( )