Damn You, Hornblower!

[woodwardiocom]

Decades ago, my father tried to get me to appreciate the Horatio Hornblower books. It didn't take.

A couple weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Hornblower Goes to Sea at a yard sale, along with a score of other books. I figured, what the heck.

Yeah. Turns out I like Hornblower after all. Now I'm going to have to tell dad he was right, dammit.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I read the Hornblower novels, and enjoyed them. But since then I've read the entire Master and Commander series, and I think they're substantially better, not least in the much stronger sense of period.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

I, by contrast, very much prefer the Hornblower novels, although I also enjoy the Aubrey-Maturin series. I've reread various and sundry Hornblowers many, many times -- once I've read a Patrick O'Brian it goes on the shelf and stays there.

This doesn't speak to prose style or literary merit, necessarily -- by comparison, Raymond Chandler is by any measure a vastly superior writer to Conan Doyle, and I've read the Holmes canon probably twenty times more often than the Marlowe books.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure. I perfectly understand that one has authors one enjoys without claiming that they're aesthetically good, just as one has authors one recognizes as good but doesn't enjoy. I regard Gene Wolfe as a better writer than S. M. Stirling, but I reread Stirling regularly, whereas Wolfe leaves me cold and I have no impulse ever to read a new book by him.

On the other hand, when I was last cat sitting for the friend who lent me the A/M series, I picked up her copy of Master and Commander and fell right back in. So I think those novels hit my buttons, as well as having a good sense of period and a sophisticated prose style, and not being about a 20th century man in an 18th century navy, which is my biggest complaint about Hornblower.

[anselm23.livejournal.com]

The Hornblower novels were grandpa's gift to me, in both senses — I have all his hardcovers, thanks to his last will and testament; and I got to read them all while he was still alive. I'm a second-generation fan, having learned Hornblower stories practically at my mother's knee, who loved having her father read them to her.

Hornblower goes to Sea must have originally appeared as Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, because I don't remember that title. On the other hand, this may be one of those delightful moments in literary awareness, because in about 1958 or 1960 or so, my mother turned to my grandfather and said, "I've just finished Hornblower and the Atropos, and I really liked it, but I don't remember you reading it to me as a kid." Whereupon my grandfather looked confused, and confessed to not quite remembering the plot, and upon my mother explaining the set-up, discovered delightedly that there was still one more Hornblower novel he had not read!

Maybe this will be my advantage.

I think the Master and Commander books are crap, by comparison. Others are welcome to enjoy them, but I'm not planning on reading another one after the first three bored me. Touch and Go by Buckley is better, even.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

My copy is specifically a British paperback, and I thus suspect it's largely the same as Midshipman. Starts with his first assignment and the duel, goes on to the cargo of rice, ends after his success taking the fort in the West Indies.

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

You should see the A&E videos.

[mbarr.livejournal.com]

And if you haven't read them, the Honor Harrington books. At one point she is reading a book series that her father gave her, about the wet navies on earth, and she shares the same initials :)

[dlganger.livejournal.com]

Yes, and David Weber (the author of the Honor Harrington novels) has explicitly said that the first several books in the Honor series were a deliberate homage to Hornblower -- up to and including ripping several major plots (Rob. S. Pierre and the Committee of Public Safety, anyone?).

However, I've found that the overlap between "enjoys Hornblower" and "enjoys Honor" is approximately 50% -- either you'll like 'em both or you won't. I like 'em both, but I find Weber's writing to be a lot more Clancy-like than I would prefer. Not early Clancy, either.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I've tried Harrington. Too contrived for me.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I've read half of two Honor Harrrington books. I wasn't able to finish either. Things like "Rob S. Pierre" kept just destroying my willing suspension of disbelief; they convinced me on some emotional level that the setting was not logically derived from the initial assumptions, but was deliberately contrived to duplicate the Napoleonic Wars, with bugger factors inserted as needed. It was like playing a roleplaying game where the setting doesn't even try to be a simulationist model reality, but shoves it in your face that it's not and that you can't ask questions about how the world works.

[nakor.livejournal.com]

The "Lt. Leary Commanding" series by Drake has less of the Rob S. Pierre stuff and none of the contrived poly romance that's in the later books. They follow Aubrey/Maturin rather than Hornblower, more or less, but Drake does his usual schtick of embedding classical historical events into his stories.

[dlganger.livejournal.com]

Actually, the setting *was* logically derived from initial assumptions. The catch is those assumptions were specifically "I want to do Hornblower in space" and "I want the feel of sailing ships only in space." All the rest of it went from there.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

Put me down as one of those who prefer Aubrey/Maturin. Hornblower's all very well, but he's a bit of a stuffed shirt.

But you should totally read the Aubrey/Maturin stuff! Imagine how much more fun Hornblower would be if he had a lifelong, passionate affair with his ship's surgeon, and a girl in every port.

[drwex]

heh. I remember devouring those books at hours-long sittings when I was a mid-teen. Great escapism, even for someone like myself who's not much of a nautical fan.

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

Belatedly--both have their virtues. I find Hornblower an easier read, but I find much greater subtlety in Aubrey/Maturin, as well as a superb immersion in their world.