OK....a word to the wise. Only buy this story if you've read a bunch of the other books in the series. This is certainly no place to start. This book presupposes a good knowledge of the Sharpe saga. The characters are given little background or fleshing out. As Sharpe says himself, this is a skirmish, not a battle.
For all that, it is a rousing good read. Everything you would want from a Cornwell book only in ultra-condensed form. There is the hero and his loyal friends, the incompetent superior officer, a beautiful damsel (not at all distressed), and a bunch of French to kill. These French are not too evil, but I always found Cornwell made the villains a bit too cartoonish. Isn't the fact that they're French reason enough to hate 'em? Only kidding!
So the only question is, is the book worth the price of admission? In any other case I would probably say no, but Cornwell has basically had this one published for charity. So go ahead, splurge.

I really was expecting a full size book for the price here, guess I should read the fine print next time.

OK, this is NOT a FULL SIZE Sharpe Novel, so what?. It only makes for a BETTER one sitting read as it disposes with the non fundamental subplots of a Cornwell book (wich incidentally I love when not repetitive...)
The main interest is how Cornwell give us a condensed novel (instead of a short story) wich never developed into a normal lenght one (Probably he will have some other sketches of projected plots never fully developed wich one day will see the light in a compilation of short stories? (What about the Eastern Theater of the war, and the sieges of Zaragoza or Gerona?, He could even have been at Maida?...) I would love a proper book of Sharpe's short stories!.
You can easily identifie all the characters (AND I MEAN THE SECONDARY ONE'S) usually put there as a matter of fact, as usual some of them are nearly caricaturesque: The ambitious French Officer (thinking perhaps on his chances to get the proverbial Marshall's Baton!), the incompetent high class British officer (always of a superior rank of course), etc.
I have all the novels (first bought Sharpe's Eagle in an airport to pass the flight-time away... WHAT A FIND!... I was hooked since then (1982) and enjoyed them from the start as a fresh approach to the napoleonic wars (even if in some of the earlier efforts the "cliches" were a little gross: the lazy "siesta" adicted spanish, the brutal french, and others...), Brilliantly enough the series get focused with each passing novel produced and the overall "fresco" of the War in the Peninsula is I think well balanced. The apearance of competent Spanish patriots, spanish colaborationists with the french (funny to remind the reader they actually some of them were trying to democratise Spain in the lines of the French Revolution principles, quite a pity to think ahead of your time... Fernado VII Restauration produced a purge and bloodbath of intelectuals and quickly supressed the Constitution of Cadiz (1812) and even one of the best guerrilla figters "El Empecinado" was executed for his political views when all was over).
All Sharpe's fans will enjoy as I did.