Books: Hornblower and the Planet of Spice

[woodwardiocom]

Hornblower Goes to Sea, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, and Lieutenant Hornblower by C.S. Forester

My father tried to get me to like Hornblower when I was young, and failed. I picked up HGtS at a yard sale a few weeks back, just to give him another chance, and liked it. Dammitall. Then I found out that HGtS is an edited and censored condensation of MMH and LH. (E.g., in "The Man Who Felt Queer", they cut out the man who felt queer himself, so HH doesn't clock him over the head with a tiller.) Filled with burning outrage, I promptly went out and picked up those two books in their intact form and read them.

So, classic Age of Sail adventure. Forester preserves the biases of the era, so even HH is classist, sexist, and racist, but he is also a paragon of honor to everyone, and he's complex as the ships he commands. Recommended.

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

Yeah, well. I got 130 pages into this, and nothing had happened yet. Somebody would say something, and then there'd be a paragraph of analysis, and then someone else would say something, and there'd be another paragraph of analysis, and this went on for chapter after chapter after chapter. The Dune universe fascinates me, with its complex interlocking assumptions, its untraditional approach to SF, and the way it gives a starring role to Arrakis itself. But, alas, the sequels are simply very different books from the original. I'm keeping this (and God-Emperor) on the shelf, in case my tastes change a decade down the road, but they're not recommended.

Comments

[sleepyworm.livejournal.com]

interesting...I didn't think dune really got awful until Heretics. And somehow I managed to slog through that AND Chapterhouse. Ah, to be young again.

[herbmcsidhe.livejournal.com]

I've always felt that Children was the weakest of the (original) series, and that God Emperor almost made up for it. Others, I'm aware, have differing views.

Of the newer books by Brian herbert and Brian Anderson, I felt like I was waiting for Godot until the final two books, which I enjoyed a great deal.