HORNBLOWER AND THE HOTSPUR

Eight of the chronicles are still available, and we hope Little, Brown will see fit to name them chronologically (in the Hornblower record) rather than by year of publication. Captain Hornblower (a trilogy) spans the before and after of this new volume, and helps make understandable the references to his imprisonment and escape and carries over beyond the promotion registered in the final chapter. But the record goes still farther back to Young Hornblower ('60), Midshipman Hornblower ('50), Lieutenant Hornblower ('52). Through all of these books, taken as they came, we grew more and more devoted to the honest, courageous, imaginative officer of the British Navy, who put many a spoke in Bonaparte's wheel. His marriage (which seems more of a threat to him than the perils of the sea) opens the record here -- and one gets glimpses of his struggle with himself to assume the image of the devoted husband. There is superb sea adventure throughout and some of the characters that reappear in later volumes, Bush particularly, become more rounded personalities. Possibly there is a plethora of detail that only the initiates familiar with rigged vessels will appreciate, but the pace of story carries the neophyte along.