Horatio Hornblower

So I've moved on from Herman Melville, but I'm still in the sea novel genre. I just finished Beat To Quarters the first novel C.S. Forester wrote in his eleven novel Horatio Hornblower cycle (set during the Napoleonic Wars). The book falls at about the middle of Hornblower's story chronologically, but I read it first because it seems to be the best point of entry to see if you like the novels and want to read more. I do.

Beat To Quarters was written in 1937, so there's a lot more psychology in this book than in earlier periods of lit. That said, the book is mostly a sea adventure, rather than anything deep like Melville. The core of the book is the character of Horatio Hornblower, and it works because he seems very real to me. He's an excellent sailor and captain, heroic really, but in his own mind he has a lot of doubts and he views himself as cowardly and weak. Naturally, he always keeps a 'stiff upper lip' before his men.

I found that his internal dialogue helped me relate to the situations in the book in a greater degree, as it made me understand more clearly what was at stake in each situation. Hornblower certainly has flaws, but Beat To Quarters was written well before the 'flawed hero' transformed into today's whining anti-hero, so there's no sense of the author begging you to pity his hero. There's still enough of that old Romanticist tradition in the story to keep this an engaging adventure story.

The plot is rather thin, overall, but I found it to be a diverting read with a well-drawn main character. I actually felt like I learned something about leadership based on the qualities and behaviors Hornblower engaged in. I'll probably start reading the books in order of his life if/when I pick up the next one.