Bernard Cornwell

I finally have gotten around to reading Bernard Cornwell's books. Theyve come highly reccomended and im a big fan of historical fiction, so i dont know why its taken me so long to get started with him.

Ive read the first six Saxon Chronicles books, and now im taking a break from those to read the Sharpe novels, of which im already a fan of the movies.

Now, i sort of knew what I was in for since ive seen the movies. I know in every single one of them there is a woman that Sharpe falls in love with and she almost always dies. I already knew there would be disposable women, which isnt great, but i never really thought of Cornwell as a pervert or a sexist because of it.

Having said that, after reading the Saxon Chronicles i noticed that he tends to describe the breasts of every single female characters including the ones that are children. I dont remember which book it was, but i remember him describing a 13 year old girls breasts as "small and firm, like apples". I definitely clocked it as off putting, but these are first person novels told by a 9th century Saxon main character, so maybe, you know, hes just in character and trying to be faithful to the time period.

But he keeps doing it in the Sharpe novels! And those are third person limited – why? And how come when i looked this up to see what other people said, i dont find anything about it? But authors like Jim Butcher get dragged through the mud for their sexually charged descriptions of women, even though Butcher at the very least has the decency of keeping it to adult women only.

Im going to keep reading them because they are good books and i guess they are also a product of their time (even though their time was like the 1980's and 90's), but does anybody else find the way he writes women to be incredibly off putting and gross?