I am coming to like this series pretty well. I think I still do prefer the Hornblower novels, but these books do have a lot to offer. For one thing, the characters seem a bit more three-dimensional than Forester's. In Post Captain, for example, a fair amount of the beginning of the book has to do with events on shore while Jack Aubrey is waiting for a new command. It seems like that might detract from the story, being primarily a naval adventure, but watching Jack and Stephen as they meet the women they fall in love with, for example, or following Jack's attempts to avoid debtor's prison really serves to round out the characters. And, like the previous episode, there is plenty of action to go around, both at sea and ashore. My only complaint is that there wasn't much in the way of denouement. It's a minor flaw, though, given the structure of the book, and really all it did was make me jump right into the next one.

Started: 2007-11-06 | Finished: 2007-11-18

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