The tenth in C.S. Forester's wonderful series of novels about a British naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars, this entry illustrates Forester's growth as a writer of adventurous fiction depicting a deeply human protagonist. Forester has a way with his hero, a way of conveying Hornblower's own unheroic thoughts so as to amplify the man's true heroism. Horatio Hornblower is ten times the man he thinks himself to be, and that is much of the series' charm. But Forester has a way, also, with nautical language, language he rarely if ever explains, but which rolls off his pen so eloquently that it defines itself through osmosis. After a few of these books, one *feels* like a sailor. And finally, the adventures themselves are deeply involving, none more so than this one chronicling the end of the wars Hornblower has fought since he was youth. This is a magnificently entertaining series of novels. ( )

Episodic, as most Hornblower novels are, but the ending of several plot threads in the canon. Hornblower's attachment with Marie de Garcie ends with her death, and so does the career of the faithful friend, Bush. Hornblower begins this chapter by ending a mutiny, and ends it when the revolt of Napoleon against the settled order of Western Europe also ends. Our hero could have ended here as well, but later, commercial drives became paramount for the publishers. ( )

While a book in a longer series, I read this without much prior knowledge of the character and enjoyed it fine even so. We here follow naval hero Horatio Hornblower's outer and inner struggles in the final years of the Napoleonic wars. The novel begins very strongly, in my opinion, with Hornblower sent to deal with a mutinous crew with whom he secretly sympathizes. The pages flew by here, dove-tailing into a rather different tale as the resulting mission creep ends up being quite extreme. However, by the time a new status quo is set, the book starts dragging its feet, more and more so, and the middle third of the novel gradually loses all the steam of the first third. There is a rallying sequence of exciting action towards the very end, albeit comparatively brief, but this still ended up weakening my impression of the novel as a whole by rather a lot.

Forester's ability to show the positives and negatives of Hornblower's (for a literary war hero perhaps slightly unusual) constant introspection, prickly pride and chiding self-deprecation, strikes me as very impressive. It never slows down the narrative -- even during the slow bits mentioned above, this is if anything one of the redeeming qualities -- and only very rarely gets heavy-handed with spelling out for the reader how his thoughts and reality don't necessarily match up like he thinks they do.

All in all, despite the weaker second half of the book, I enjoyed this novel, and if I stumble over another Hornblower story in a bargain bin somewhere, I might well pick it up. ( )

Summary: Hornblower takes it up a notch as a undisputed lord and commander and also get's into a little Rambo action towards the end.

Things I like:

Still good challenges even though he's at the top of the command chain.
Still good human insight - hard to give up control to others when you think/know you can do the job better yourself.

Things I thought could be improved:

Kind of drifts a bit around the middle. The danger didn't feel as immediate.

Highlight:

When hornblower slams his boat between two gunboats and let's rip with both broadsides, quite thrilling ( )

The first half of the book, which was all of the naval action, was great; as soon as Hornblower got on land it took a nosedive. Dude needs some therapy. ( )