Product Description

Read by the star of the new TV series, another of C.S. Forester's famous Hornblower novels on abridged audio for the first time. Fresh from the triumphs of the Flying Colours, Hornblower is on a desperate mission. Leading a powerful squadron into northern waters with the aim of hampering the onslaughts of Naploeon's armies, Hornblower is confronted by fog, ice and snow in the Baltic, with the navies of both Russia, Sweden and French privateers, and with high politics and vital commerce. For a few months the fate of Europe is balanced on a knife edge - and the responsibility is his.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #572566 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-07
• Released on: 1999-10-04
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Audio Cassette

About the Author
CS Forester is the author of the bestselling HORNBLOWER novels - soon to be a major TV series.

Customer Reviews

New Issues and Challenges for Hornblower!
Most Hornblower fans will either be strongly attracted to Commodore Hornblower . . . or strongly repelled by it.

In the beginning, this book's mood shifts greatly from the earlier books now that Hornblower is rich and famous, and happily married to Lady Barbara. His glittering brothers-in-law are off winning critical battles, and Hornblower feels like he needs to keep winning some semblance of renown in order to retain Lady Barbara's respect. The book starts off slowly, therefore, in setting the stage for Captain Sir Horatio Hornblower's elevated status in society and in the fleet.

As a commodore, Hornblower has a small squadron under his command, including one ship of the line, the Nonsuch (seventy four guns), commanded by Captain Bush. Hornblower's orders give him the "widest latitude of discretion to enter the Baltic Sea and create problems for Bonaparte, who is threatening both Sweden and Russia in the spring of 1812. Secretly, his brother-in-law, foreign secretary Marquis Wellesley, warns Hornblower that he should be prepared to assist the Czar in leaving St. Petersburg should Napoleon invade and overrun Russia. Within the Baltic, the Russians have 14 ships of the line, and the Swedes almost as many.

Nearing the Baltic, Hornblower knows that the Danes are hostile, having been conquered by the French. So he steers away from their batteries nearing the Baltic. But are the Swedes still neutral? There's only one way to find out. Run under their batteries and see if they fire?

Political events rapidly develop, aided by Hornblower's diplomacy and deceptions. By winter, the Grande Armee has invaded Russia, reached Moscow, and been shattered by the Russian weather. Hornblower, in the meantime, is attempting to thwart an attack through Latvia aimed at capturing the Russian capital of St. Petersburg. The action, once it begins, will remind you somewhat of the best parts of Ship of the Line.

For those who wish to follow the armed conflicts in the book, I suggest you refer to the Hornblower Companion's maps to see where the action is set.

Two other new elements become important in this story. Hornblower is getting older, and begins to develop an interest in his younger officers not unlike a father would have for a son. Yet these "sons" are in deadly peril. How will that affect Hornblower?

The other new perspective is that Hornblower spends a lot of time with diplomats, political figures, and even heads of state. These added dimensions will be attractive to those who would like to see new sides to Hornblower. If you read a lot of historical fiction, you will find this book comes closer to the classic story where the fictional character interacts frequently with well known historical figures.

Since Hornblower and Bush are both captains, you find their relationship becoming more like equals as it was in Lieutenant Hornblower. I enjoyed that shift.

Much like Hornblower and the Atropos, Commodore Hornblower takes some interesting looks at new technology, including naval mortars and methods for reducing the draft of bomb-ketches.

How can a leader set a good example? How should setting the right example be balanced with the need to get the right results? In Commodore Hornblower, Hornblower is torn between leading all of the action and encouraging his men to do the right thing. It's obviously a delicate balance that you will enjoy as Hornblower once again foils the Corsican tyrant in his own small way.

"The widest latitude of discretion"
This is the eighth Hornblower novel in the series, viewed chronologically, but was the fourth that CS Forester wrote. It was written in 1945, and Bernard Cornwell in his introduction lists it as his favourite. (This is a review of the smart new Penguin edition with introductions by the author of the Sharpe novels.) It's certainly one of my favourites, but I think that might have something to do with its Baltic setting. It is a theatre that is rarely covered in histories of the Napoleonic Wars. This also affords you the opportunity to get out the atlas and look up the positions and landscapes surrounding places such as Rugen and Stralsund.

Hornblower's unceasing anti-Napoleonic bias, whilst understandable in an officer of a nation at war becomes a little wearisome: if Hornblower is to be believed he is the devil with no redeeming features. But this novel was written not long after Hitler had tried the same trick, so one may perhaps forgive Forester's zeal.

The novel opens with "Captain Sir Horatio Hornblower sat in his bath, regarding with distaste his legs dangling over the end." After his exploits in the previous novel `Flying Covers', he now possessed "fame, wealth, security, love, a child - he had all that hear could desire. ... [But Hornblower] was puzzled to find that he was still not happy."

It's April 1812 and Hornblower has the chance to escape to see again, this time promoted to commodore, his orders allowing him "the widest latitude of discretion." This was just what our hero needed. Besides, "enthusiasts had talked or written of the pleasures innumerable, of gardens or women, wine or fishing; it was strange that no one had ever told of the pleasure of walking a quarterdeck."

There are shortcomings in the plot. The Swedes would have known of Hornblower's coming into The Sound at Helsingborg well beforehand for his flotilla would have been well within telescopic- if not eye-sight for 150 miles as it cruised south through the Kattegat. And I found the fact that Hornblower's squadron had two bomb-ketches a little too contrived. Also, it is difficult (for me, anyway) to see how Hornblower could slash Braun's wrist with his sword when Braun is on the balcony that surrounds the hall. (Hornblower is unnaturally very slow off the mark here anyway in not sussing Braun's intentions earlier.) And when Hornblower sends back the cutter to the admiralty with dispatches, how did he expect it to survive The Sound on its own with the guns of Amager and Saltholm followed by those at Elsinore?

Geography continues to cause problems later in the novel. Forester wrote that Hornblower could see craft issuing from Elbing. If this is Elblag at the western end of the inner bay of the Frisches Haff, then Hornblower can see forty miles if he is stationed at or near the other end. And the spit - the Nehrung - is described as twenty miles long on page 215, but fifteen miles long on page 237! And the Gulf of Finland on page 252 is surely the Gulf of Riga.

As usual, there is the acute psychological exploration of Hornblower's character, "Unlike some victims he had met he could never be seasick unselfconsciously, he told himself bitterly, and then with his usual rasping self-analysis he told himself that that should not surprise him, seeing that he was never unselfconscious at all." If he had lived a hundred years later, it seems the commodore is ripe for a session with Dr Freud!

Part of the joy of this novel is that it is also a diplomatic tale. Stralsund is in Swedish Pomerania on the north German coast, where a French privateer is attempting to hide herself from view. Is Sweden neutral? Hornblower has to weigh up the diplomatic as well as the military options. Needless to say, our hero's intuition is up to the mark.

Despite all these criticisms, I still thoroughly enjoy this novel. As already mentioned, it is set in an unusual theatre of war and it has as much diplomatic as military implications. But it is also up to Forester's usual high standard of story-telling. Regardless of its problems, it remains a firm favourite in the canon.