Mr. Cornwell,

I just want to say thank you very much for the contribution you give to your readers, fans, and the historical novel society. I’m currently on a 9 month deployment and I can’t put your Sharpe series down. Besides the day to day heroics (:P), I can honestly say the highlight of my nights are returning to my rack to see what happens to Sharpe next. While reading Sharpe’s Trafalgar I felt as if I could truly relate while serving aboard ship. I’ve only just got through Sharpe’s Rifles, but my question is this:

Do you recommend for your fans to read the Sharpe series in chronological order, or the order in which you wrote the books? As a newer fan, I’ve read from the first chronological book and haven’t been disappointed — though when I got to Sharpe’s Rifles I’d found that it seemed as if Sharpe had underwent drastic changes (maybe because of the large gap in the time written between Rifle’s and Sharpe’s Prey).

Ryan