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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
I can't give more than three stars to a fragment, but this had the makings of a crackerjack tale. At least it establishes how Hornblower was made.
Good, but would be soooooo much better if it was finished!!!
Take note, ye authors that like to procrastinate. Finish those series you've been ignoring for all those years, as you may do a Forester and shuffle off this mortal coil before finishing it.
Do you really want to do that to your fans? Do you really want your final work to be released alongside a few sentences stating what your notes say will happen to resolve things?
No, no you don't. Cease your procrastination. Write! (please?)
Take note, ye authors that like to procrastinate. Finish those series you've been ignoring for all those years, as you may do a Forester and shuffle off this mortal coil before finishing it.
Do you really want to do that to your fans? Do you really want your final work to be released alongside a few sentences stating what your notes say will happen to resolve things?
No, no you don't. Cease your procrastination. Write! (please?)
Not sure how to put a rating on an unfinished book, so I'm going for the neutral-ish three. But if Hornblower and the Crisis had been finished, it could well have been a contester for my favourite of the series. I especially liked how Hornblower showed some signs of post-trauma instead of his usual sulking. I wonder if the rest of the book would have continued this trend, or if Hornblower would have reverted to self-loathing because of his espionage job.
Perhaps it's the unfinished, possibly unedited nature of the book, but it felt a little too reminiscent of similar adventures to really capture my interest. Maybe I'd say differently if it had been completed in full, but as it stands what we have is still beautiful but a tad repetitive.
Wow I wish I would have read what Forester had in mind for the rest of this book! This would have been a great adventure.
This book had so much promise for being such a great book! Spanish spy Hornblower is really something I would've loved to have read and explored!
I realize this story is unfinished, but the novel ended at quite a nice point. The short stories were pleasant reads.
adventurous
relaxing
fast-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Originally published on my blog here in November 1998.
This posthumously published collection of Hornblower stories includes the last story Forester wrote, which is an incomplete first draft, and the last Hornblower story in their internal chronology. The incomplete story, which fills the bulk of the book and gives it its title, is Forester filling in a gap in Hornblower's past. A newly appointed captain, he captures a ship and takes possession of secret papers from Napoleon, bearing his new seal as Emperor of France. This, the Admiralty decides, is to be used as the model for a forged order to the French admiral Villeneuve, to entice him out of his refuge so that the British fleet could attack (the scenario of the battle of Trafalgar). Hornblower volunteers to travel into Napoleon's empire and take the fake dispatch to Villeneuve; then the draft ends, left uncompleted on Forester's death.
The problem with all of this lies in a kind of inconsistency with the rest of Hornblower's career, caused by the fact that the internal chronology of the stories does not match the order in which they were written. Such an important event, besides opening up the possibility of promotion in a completely different way, would surely have resonances to be picked up later, particularly in Flying Colours, in which he is again travelling secretly through French territory (this time as an escaped prisoner of war). But because these books were written earlier, neither Hornblower himself nor any of the other characters ever mentions the scenario of this story.
The book is filled out with two earlier short stories. One features Hornblower as a kind of detective, where the solution to the problem he has been set seems to me to be rather too contrived. The other is set right at the end of Hornblower's career, in the year of revolution 1848 when he entertains an unexpected guest whom he thinks is a madman because he is announced as claiming to be Napoleon; of course, he turns out to be Louis Napoleon (later Emperor Napoleon III) on his way to Paris to seize power. Forester was not a master of the short story, and these two stories are competent pieces of craftsmanship without really having even the ambition to be anything more.
Overall then, this book is for Hornblower fans and competists, not the casual reader.
This posthumously published collection of Hornblower stories includes the last story Forester wrote, which is an incomplete first draft, and the last Hornblower story in their internal chronology. The incomplete story, which fills the bulk of the book and gives it its title, is Forester filling in a gap in Hornblower's past. A newly appointed captain, he captures a ship and takes possession of secret papers from Napoleon, bearing his new seal as Emperor of France. This, the Admiralty decides, is to be used as the model for a forged order to the French admiral Villeneuve, to entice him out of his refuge so that the British fleet could attack (the scenario of the battle of Trafalgar). Hornblower volunteers to travel into Napoleon's empire and take the fake dispatch to Villeneuve; then the draft ends, left uncompleted on Forester's death.
The problem with all of this lies in a kind of inconsistency with the rest of Hornblower's career, caused by the fact that the internal chronology of the stories does not match the order in which they were written. Such an important event, besides opening up the possibility of promotion in a completely different way, would surely have resonances to be picked up later, particularly in Flying Colours, in which he is again travelling secretly through French territory (this time as an escaped prisoner of war). But because these books were written earlier, neither Hornblower himself nor any of the other characters ever mentions the scenario of this story.
The book is filled out with two earlier short stories. One features Hornblower as a kind of detective, where the solution to the problem he has been set seems to me to be rather too contrived. The other is set right at the end of Hornblower's career, in the year of revolution 1848 when he entertains an unexpected guest whom he thinks is a madman because he is announced as claiming to be Napoleon; of course, he turns out to be Louis Napoleon (later Emperor Napoleon III) on his way to Paris to seize power. Forester was not a master of the short story, and these two stories are competent pieces of craftsmanship without really having even the ambition to be anything more.
Overall then, this book is for Hornblower fans and competists, not the casual reader.
Perhaps it's the unfinished, possibly unedited nature of the book, but it felt a little too reminiscent of similar adventures to really capture my interest. Maybe I'd say differently if it had been completed in full, but as it stands what we have is still beautiful but a tad repetitive.