Hornblower : Beat to Quarters
by C. S. Forester
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Book Summary Information
Author: C. S. ForesterEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1985-09-30
ISBN: 0316289329
Number of pages: 324
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Book Reviews of Hornblower : Beat to Quarters
Book Review: Historical Fiction at Its Best...and a Grand Hero
Summary: 5 Stars
C. S. Forester, Beat to Quarters.
Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander
I've begun reading C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels for the fourth or fifth time and I'm enjoying them almost as much as the first time through. Last year, I read about half of Patrick O'Brian's stunning Aubrey-Maturin sea novels for a second time: they didn't lose a thing in the rereading, they're so good. Both authors knew their subject matter thoroughly -naval battle in the age of sail, the sea campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. Both succeeded admirably in conveying the nature and feel of life at sea in crowded, sometimes ungainly, often elegant wooden sailing vessels that in the heat of battle often became floating coffins for the men who inhabited them. Self-doubting Hornblower and his loyal lieutenant Bush, ebullient Jack Aubrey and his surgeon-spy friend Stephen Maturin are men we easily come to admire, full-fleshed characters. The love stories which form a second melody in many of the books in both series are engrossing; you root for the course of true love, for Hornblower's indomitable Lady Barbara and Jack's virginal and stubbornly maternal Sophie.
There are differences. O'Brian is the more consistently superior writer and you laugh more when you read his books. Forester has the annoying habit of telling the reader about changes (largely naval practices) that occur later than the events described rather than, as does O'Brian, simply letting the details of the narration build up a sense of past times in the reader's mind. But Foresterr doesn't indulge himself often and it's a very minor irritation in a splendid narrative that spreads across how eleven novels.
The ambition of these writers is abashing. How did they keep narrative focus through eleven (in Forester's case) and eighteen (O'Brian's) books? How did they succeed -and succeed they truly did--in creating real characters who mature from book to book and communicate their humanity as well as their heroism to readers of a time two hundred years later? These are exceptional books.
Summary of Hornblower : Beat to Quarters
June 1808, somewhere west of Nicaragua-a site suitable for spectacular sea battles. The Admiralty has ordered Captain Horatio Hornblower, now in command of the thirty-six-gun HMS Lydia, to form an alliance against the Spanish colonial government with an insane Spanish landowner; to find a water route across the Central American isthmus; and "to take, sink, burn or destroy" the fifty-gun Spanish ship of the line Natividad or face court-martial. A daunting enough set of orders-even if the happily married captain were not woefully distracted by the passenger he is obliged to take on in Panama: Lady Barbara Wellesley.Action & Adventure Books
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