I fenced in high school and college and usually enjoy a good swashbuckling story. I was really excited about Sharps because unlike The Princess Bride or generic high fantasy novel, this was specifically about "fencers," albeit in a fantasy setting. Unfortunately, this novel reads more like a combination of Waiting for Godot and a wannabe Terry Pratchett that I found the reading difficult and the description of the fencing so absurdly technical that I don't understand how it would be appealing to someone who had never fenced.
The novel opens with an introduction to all of the major players in this novel. However, this introduction is very random. Characters are not necessarily named, their actions are random and do not immediately lead to a coherent story, and the dialogue is somewhat painful if you can imagine the Samuel Beckett/Terry Pratchett combination of serious inanity and existentialism. None of the characters are particularly likeable and as a reader you are definitely led to certain conclusions about the personality and motives of the characters. Unlike some novels where you can see the ending from the first page, this book is intentionally obscure. 50 pages from the end I was still saying, "I have no idea how the author is going to wrap up this storyline." In that respect I applaud the author for not being obvious, but the ending left me having to go back and reread certain passages to make sure I understood what had happened and scratching my head because I didn't completely understand how the author managed this or that particular feat.
Did I mention there are no chapters in this book? 400 something pages and no chapters. I was annoyed when Hemingway did that with The Old Man and the Sea, but at least that book was short. I wish I could have read this book in one sitting, I might have enjoyed it more, but without chapter marks I felt uncomfortable putting the book down when I had to because I was in jeopardy of forgetting which characters I was following and what actions had lead up to the point I broke off at. There were paragraph breaks that allowed me rests, but seriously it could have used some chapters to demark which character I was reading about and where they were geographically.
The fencing was enjoyable to read and I got a few good chuckles out of it. However, I stand by the fact that if you were never into fencing the jokes about certain rules will not make sense and the classical styles and terminology will have you running to YouTube and Wikipedia for an explanation. I had thought at first this writer was a fencer, but it turns out he had gotten expert training from a classical style fencing master and several classic texts from the library. This means the author was really excited about fencing, but didn't really know how to relate what he learned to an audience that has no idea what he's talking about.
All in all, not really my favorite book. Too difficult to get through and not written well enough for a layman. If you do fence it might be worth picking it up for things like "they fence in straight lines here" but really I think you will be exasperated by the lack of chapters and affected style of writing.
