I generally find the historical details (of the actual battles) to be good, but I agree with Kirk, it has become formulaic, and repetitive. Some of the side characters are very good, like William Frederickson. I still have them all and read them occasionally, finding them entertaining and educational, but knowing their limitations. Same goes for his most recent work, (which spawned a not very good TV series).

I second the recommendation of the Hervey series, and doubly so anything by George MacDonald-Fraser. He also wrote a non-fiction history of the Anglo-Scottish Borders, which was very good. He also did a short novel based on that history called The Candlemass Road, which I think is one of his best works.

If you like Flashman, I recommend as a sort of anti-Flashman, John Biggins’ books. The Emperor’s Coloured Coat, Tomorrow The World, The Two Headed Eagle, A Sailor of Austria. It is about the adventures of Otto Prohaska, an Austro-Hungarian naval officer, from his cadet service to the end of WWI and a bit beyond.

Like Flashman, he is writing his memoirs, or rather dictating them, as he nears the end of his life in a nursing home in Wales. Also like Flashman, he has a knack of getting involved in many of the signature events of his time and place, with a fascinating look into the culture and politics of the dying empire. Unlike Flashman, he is a (mostly) honourable, genuine hero.

Biggins got the idea when he found a photo album of WWI photos in a junk shop, made by a submariner in the Austro-Hungarian navy. The character is somewhat based on an enhanced Georg Von Trapp, who is mentioned several times in the book.

If you want something older and more historical, his other work, The Surgeon’s Apprentice is definitely worth the read.

From the blurb….

“A novel detailing the early years of the Flemish surgeon, explorer, astrologer, natural philosopher and proto-scientist Frans Michielszoon van Raveyck (1610-95). Born in mysterious circumstances in a small town in Flanders on Christmas Day 1610, the hero later becomes stepson to the town’s surgeon and is apprenticed to him following the family’s flight to England in 1622 to escape a charge of witchcraft. Forced to flee once more in 1625, to the Netherlands, following an unsuccessful operation for bladder stone on a local outlaw, Frans and his stepfather enter service aboard a Dutch warship and are involved in the disastrous Anglo-Dutch expedition to Cadiz in October 1625. Taken prisoner by the Spaniards, Frans escapes conscription into the Spanish Army only by entering service aboard a Dunkirk privateer ship, which takes him back to Flanders at the end of 1625.”

So in the historical period shading between that of Sharpe and of Flashman.

They managed to get blurbs in praise from O’Brien, at least. And I do remember the one I read [probably Words of Command] being quite dense with technical and administrative/regimental matters, as well as things like when and how militia, yeomanry, or regular cavalry could be called out to suppress riot, and when and how a soldier could injure or kill a subject lawfully without it being murder. A whole segment of the book was devoted to the handling of such an incident.

Can’t speak to the rest of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Mallinson

I still have Fraser on my to read list for someday. Shute I was aware of only for “On the Beach”.

Cornwell, I’m afraid, has managed to turn much of his work into derivative commodity-item dreck, literary flotsam and jetsam.

You want another good historical read, look to anything by George MacDonald Fraser, whose Flashman novels are well worth the read–If only for the fact that the man dares write an absolute anti-hero as a protagonist, and manages to make it work! His other stuff is excellent. The McAuslan books are excellent little gems of work, carrying on from his “Quartered Safe Out Here” autobiographical work.

I’m also fond of Nevil Shute. There’s a little gem of his, “Trustee from the Tool Room”, that really deserves a much wider reading than it has.

I’ve only read one, which was in médias res of the series, but enjoyed it.

Tales of a cavalry officer in the same era.

Don’t recall how PC it was. With Sharpe, I only recall his attitude toward black slavery when he met a Loyalist officer from Virginia.

It’s in the public domain and has been released by the excellent folk at Faded Page, one of my favorite websites:

https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20200218

The Sharpe series is particularly bad–You’re constantly tripping over modern sensibilities being expressed by denizens of the late 18th Century, and it’s not at all in keeping with what you read in the original sources. There’s also a lot of “left-out” stuff which stems from what I suspect is a general lack of personal knowledge of what marching in the ranks would have been like for men like Sharpe and his men.

Overall, it’s a decent series, has some good historical bits in it, but when considered as something compared to say, Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin series, it’s not anywhere near as thoroughly well-done. The equivalent to that which describes Napoleonic ground warfare has yet to be written, and the Sharpe series ain’t it. As an introduction to the era, it’s not bad. As a definitive work? Not there. None of Cornwell’s stuff is, sadly–He’s a popular writer, and like everything else he does, it’s suffered the same Michenerization that Tom Clancy has–He’s churning out product, not literature.

Which ain’t bad, altogether, but it’s something I can only take in limited doses. The really irritating thing is, you buy a new book, and what you feel like after a few chapters is that “…this is something I’ve already read, of his… All they did was file off the serial numbers, and change the names…”.

I think I read the entire series, back when, but… It grew stale, long before he left the UK for the US, and started writing other series. Now, most of the stuff he churns out is the same set of stock characters with the same set of issues to work through, just in a different era. And, they all have modern sensibilities, ethics, and morals. None of his characters seem to be “of their era”.

And, just once… I’d like to pick up a historical novel where the characters rang true for where, when, and who they really were representing. I’m about damn tired of reading crap where the protagonist Viking raider is anti-slavery and who really, really loves his fellow man. Be honest about it, writers–If you’re writing about the Teutonic Knights, get the characters right, don’t try to make them sympathetic Abraham Lincoln’s of their time and place. It doesn’t work.