Form Line of Battle!
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Form Line of Battle!
Narrated by:
Michael Jayston
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Narrated by:
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Michael Jayston
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By:
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Alexander Kent
About this listen
The scene is Gibraltar, 1793. The gathering might of revolutionary France prepares to engulf Europe in another bloody war. As in the past, Britain will stand or fall by the fighting power of her fleet. For Richard Bolitho, the renewal of hostilities means a fresh command and the chance of action.
©1969 Alexander Kent (P)2014 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"One of our foremost writers of naval fiction." ( Sunday Times, London)
One of the Best
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This is one of my favourites of the series so far and has it all from Michael Jayston's excelent narration to lots of action and intrigue. I'm going straight on to the next one!
The Binge Continues!
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Richard Bolitho is a legend
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Great to be at sea again
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Out of step
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These books tend to contain certain words slipped in that hint at salaciousness of a mixed sort. These are "nakedness" "breasts" "stockings", the latter with naval officers. The readings themselves follow set patterns. Involving near-identical length pauses such as "He said - (quietly) - pause - "Speech content" That "quietly" crops up more often in these poorly written things than in any other I can recall reading either in an actual book or an audio version such as this one.
Kent always works-in at least one sea action to all of these books, and in the middle of these maelstroms of sonic-speed grape, canister, round shot, and albeit slower oaken splinters - Bolitho stands almost injury free while his coxswain Allday (formerly Stockdale, but the exact same personage really) is also immune from the death and destruction all around. How credible is that? Poorly so, in my take on it. I know the 30 book series covers both Richard Bolitho and his - nephew? Can't recall now.
In early books admirals tend broadly to be the assistive sort, but at this 11th they're a pretty nasty set. This book's example performs a complete 180 turnaround in the last stages, not credible but even so Kent's editors didn't apparently feedback that this was likely to be greeted with scorn by readers with some experience of life.
The detail given of injuries in naval actions is at times excessive and needlessly graphic. I don't recall Forester needing to use such means to convey the horrors of such warfare. There's too much of guts and dismembering and not enough of witnesses' reaction to seeing these terrible outcomes of warfare of this sort.
I'm no historian nor tactician, but it seems that Luck favours Bolitho too much. So I cant tell if the actions described are full of fallacy or tightly understood ship handling. Both seem possible.
And - there's a sick making level of adoration in crew and onlookers who see Bolitho as some sort of plaster cast miracle working saint figure, unable to see past the obvious to perceive the reality. I'm quite certain that there never was any Naval officer, past or present, who was a paragon to the degree that Bolitho is - just that. His errors are tiny, and are never, ever because he had a moment of weakness of character. Those that there are, are because of a minor misjudgment.
Too much by far is made of the vaguely questionable relationship between Allday and his hero, the former having welded himself to the persona of The Bolitho, and it's not too credible that neither of this pair should lose a foot or hand or arm or leg or eye, when there's repeatedly times that these two seem almost to be the Last Men Standing in the midst of utter carnage - yet Kent insists that we accept this as credible. Which pretty much reduces these "novels" to the level of graphic comic-book hero worship tales of Georgian bravado.
If that's what you're after, you may have hit gold when discovering Kent's nearly inexhaustible supply of such stuff.
As said elsewhere, Kent is no CS Forester and Bolitho is no Hornblower. But if you crave naval stories set in this approximate period then the range of authors is not vast - over the two mentioned, there's the Lucky Jack Aubrey series by Patrick O'Brian. Several of which were blended into the film "Master and Commander", which has been said to be the most accurate portrayal of wooden warship life and battle. Which may be so? but the books - despite their popularity seem to me to be subject to most of the above crit, albeit proportionately different-ish.
In the Kent books nowhere near enough is made of developing Herrick's character, although if I recall rightly there's a break in their friendship yet to come.
To summarise. They're formulaic, and not very well written. Auxiliary characters - like Herrick - are often too numerous and insufficiently fleshed-out, remaining so skeletal that it's not too easy to relate to them.
There's only one woman-figure in these. Sometimes her name is this, sometimes that, But her speech doesn't vary, as it would had the characters been seen as actually different, But Kent seems to use them only as plot- devices, in this case to focus the hatred felt for Bolitho by this particularly horrible admiral-persona. Who, of course, conveniently dies. While reversing his evil temper's effects in a will that reads like a last moment device to tie up loose ends because the story was well into its death throes by that point.
Still formulaic
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