LIEUTENANT HORNBLOWER by C. S. Forester

Lieutenant Hornblower (1952) is C. S. Forester’s second Hornblower novel chronologically, seventh by publication. Horatio Hornblower, now a lieutenant, is serving on HMS Renown under the mad Captain Sawyer, who sees mutiny all around him. At the same time, Renown is sent to the West Indies on a mission to take a Spanish base. Following the resolution of these dramas, Hornblower’s career is threatened by the Peace of Amiens.

This novel introduces William Bush, Hornblower’s fellow officer, who becomes Hornblower’s good friend and who appears in most of the chronologically succeeding novels. Bush is a phlegmatic character, and a thoroughly competent, if unimaginative, officer. Lieutenant Hornblower is told from his perspective rather than Hornblower’s. This spares the reader all of Hornblower’s inner drama, self-criticism and inadequacies, and Hornblower comes off (through Bush’s eyes) as slightly eccentric but purely heroic.

Forester does a fantastic job of character development here (much better than in the previous Mr. Midshipman Hornblower). Lieutenants Bush, Buckland and Hornblower are all well done and well fleshed out – each man has distinctly unique strengths, weaknesses, desires, concerns, and personality. Forester gives the reader some particular insight into Hornblower’s character at the end of the novel, when, because of the cessation of hostilities, Hornblower must earn his living as a gambler. The man always does the charitable thing, the caring thing, and yet he does it not because he necessarily cares genuinely, but because he is bent on mastering himself, and, as far as possible, overcoming the weakness of his humanity.

Lieutenant Hornblower has an excellent mix of action, drama and suspense. It seems like the use of archaic naval jargon is less here than it was in Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, but perhaps I’ve gotten used to it, or, perhaps, the superior storytelling has marginalized its distractive impact. Lieutenant Hornblower also has several of those great little moments, those quirky, memorable instances that define both a character and a book.

In all, Lieutenant Hornblower is an entertaining, well-written book, and as good a work in this genre as you’re likely to find.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

THE NEVERENDING STORY by Michael Ende

The Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte) is a 1979 young adult fantasy novel by Michael Ende, translated from the original German by Ralph Manheim and illustrated by Roswitha Quadflieg. In our world, Bastian, a fat, unpleasant, unloved bookworm of a child, steals a book called The Neverending Story from a shop. This book chronicles the adventures of the child hero Atreyu, who embodies all the virtues that Bastian does not, as he attempts to save the world of Fantastica from total destruction. But their two worlds, as Bastian comes to discover, are connected.

By now, most people coming to The Neverending Story for the first time will already be familiar with the 1984 Wolfgang Petersen film. The movie covers the first half of the book, and The Neverending Story II is only loosely based on the second half.

Ende has created dozens of imaginative lands and creatures – perhaps too many, as the reader is taken through them all so quickly that few are able to make a lasting impact. This is probably The Neverending Story’s biggest flaw. There is material here for numerous books, but all packed together, it reads like a whirlwind, and often feels like the literary equivalent of looking out the window of a high-speed train, moving from one fantastic situation to another without a pause to soak in the scenery (or have a little character development).

Bastian is the only character who receives significant development (Atreyu has the monomyth pattern stamped all over him; he is a two-dimensional, archetypal hero to the core), and Ende does some surprising things with him. Bastian evolves from an unlikable child with low self-confidence to an arrogant bully to a villainous tyrant, and it’s a gutsy move on Ende’s part to take Bastian as far down that path as he does.

Ende touches lightly on a number of mature themes, including life and death, morality, love, belief, and desire. Again, though, one wishes he had spent a little more time developing them, which would have given the book a deeper and more lasting impact.

The book itself is artistically done and well-presented. The text is presented in two colors: one for scenes on Earth and one for scenes on Fantastica. The book is divided into twenty-six chapters, each with its own illustrated frontispiece featuring the first letter of that chapter’s text (they go from A to Z, in order) and that chapter’s events.

On the whole, The Neverending Story is an entertaining and highly imaginative fantasy that will appeal to fans of the genre of all ages, even if its brisk pace holds it back somewhat.

RECOMMENDED

MR. MIDSHIPMAN HORNBLOWER by C. S. Forester

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower is a 1950 novel by C. S. Forester. It is, chronologically, the first book in the eleven-book Hornblower series, although Forester wrote it sixth. It reads and flows considerably more like a sequence of short stories than a novel. In 1794, the young Horatio Hornblower enters the Royal Navy as a midshipman. Britain is involved in military action against France and Spain (it is the dawn of the Napoleonic Wars), and Hornblower has adventures in and out of combat.

The gawky, seasick Hornblower is an interesting character. He is intelligent, brave, and clever, but he is also extremely introspective, self-critical, and insecure, which makes him an unnecessarily harsh judge of himself, as he typically focuses on what he perceives as his cowardice and dishonesty. To a large degree, the way Forester handles and develops this character is what keeps things interesting.

Forester’s writing is not for everyone. He is short on the physical details of characters and rather long on the use of two hundred year old naval jargon. This latter gives his writing a profound ring of authenticity, although it may prove somewhat inscrutable at times to most twenty-first century landsmen. Mostly, though, the stories and dialogue flow coherently.

With a collection of entertaining if largely unremarkable stories, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower is a solid introduction to the Hornblower series for those desiring to read them chronologically.

RECOMMENDED

MISTBORN: THE FINAL EMPIRE by Brandon Sanderson

Mistborn: The Final Empire is a 2006 fantasy novel by Brandon Sanderson. It is part of the Mistborn trilogy, but is a complete story on its own (although not everything is wrapped tidily at the end) and can be read as such. In the Mistborn world, an immortal tyrant has ruled the empire for a thousand years. Now, a group of thieves and magic users undertake a plot to overthrow him.

Mistborn’s magic system is refreshingly novel. Most magic users have access to one of eight special abilities, which they activate by ingesting trace amounts of the appropriate metal. The more powerful Mistborn have access to all eight metal-based abilities, plus more, making them in essence a poor man’s hybrid of Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto. Mistborn’s main character is Vin, a sixteen year old petty thief who has just discovered that she is a Mistborn, and who has joined this conspiracy to overthrow the empire.

Most of Sanderson’s supporting cast has been drawn from the bin of generic, flat, cookie-cutter fantasy characters. His treatment of Vin, though, makes us wonder what he was thinking. Particularly early on, both Sanderson as the narrator and his characters point out repeatedly that she is timid and has low self-confidence. But Sanderson doesn’t write her that way – Vin is headstrong, stubborn, nosy, fussy and sarcastic. This is not the only time that what the characters do and what the narrator says about them do not agree. Either way, Vin isn’t a particularly interesting or likeable character.

Sanderson’s writing keeps him from getting the most out of his story, which is a shame because the magic is interesting and the plot is perfectly good. The story develops slowly. Sanderson spends the first 150 pages of the novel belaboring the magic system and having his characters speak in stiff, expository history-lesson paragraphs, almost as though he were writing this so it could be followed by small children. At 530 pages, Mistborn is at least 100 pages too long, and it’s often tough to get through.

Mistborn does get it together over the last 100 pages and has a genuinely solid and reasonably satisfactory climax. There are flashes of brilliance here, but it may be too little, too late to persuade readers to read the sequels.

In On Writing, Stephen King said, “The adverb is not your friend.” But the adverb is Sanderson’s very good friend indeed. He flings them liberally, distractingly, throughout the novel, and not only are there too many, he often makes some jarringly curious choices. And Sanderson’s dialogue throughout the novel is wooden and clunky – bad to a degree one typically finds only in world-building genre fiction like this.

Sanderson has done a good job constructing his world and his magic system, but he’s done a terrible job actually telling the story, making Mistborn: The Final Empire a frustrating and disappointing work.

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