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crack_van2004-04-22 08:33 pm
widget285.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2004-04-22 08:33 pm
Entry tags:
The Windward Series by Atropos Lee (PG-13/NC-17)
Fandom: HORNBLOWER
Pairing: primarily Horatio/Archie but several others largely by implication
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
atropos_lee
Author Website: Atropos' Locker
Why this must be read:
The Windward Series is a remarkable series of vignettes (Cherrystones and Lavender, Deptford Dolls, Kennedy, Disconsolate, Hornblower Reflective, Bush, Meditative, Beating to Windward) that explore the life and loves of Hornblower. Spanning a half century from childhood to ripe maturity, each vignette captures a relatively brief moment in time, each one of which is seen from a different point of view. Hornblower, Kennedy, Pellew and Bush all have their say and these stories provide an interesting insight into how these characters "see" Horatio who is the central figure around whom all of them orbit. They are quiet, understated meditations (not coincidentally the author uses words like "Reflective" and "Meditative" in the titles) and more than a little bittersweet. Rarely has Forester's vision of Hornblower as "the man apart" been better illustrated.
The series culminates with Beating to Windward, a complex, emotionally fraught story that brings together the threads of the previous vignettes as well as elements from the canon stories. It is a final accounting of sorts of the choices made and the prices paid, not only by Hornblower but by those who loved him and the reckoning is not an easy one to accept. It's a haunting story, credible and true to the characters depicted in the books and the screen and well worth reading.
Our greetings are effusive and heartfelt. Our partings are perforce, brief, cold and to the point. We say goodbye, and mean it, because we know we may bid farewell forever.
So you will understand why I should consider myself fortunate to have enjoyed my friend's companionship for eight years, separated though we may have been for some short stretch. That is more than any seaman could, or would, hope for.
As I watch him leave this room, to enjoy the fruits of his new station, not least the money which burns in his pockets, I know that one night he may shake the hand of a confidant, a man dear to him, as he descends to the boat on some commission, and learn hours, days, months later that he is dead, gone beyond recall, and his heart will break.
I also know now that man will not be me, and the realisation is bitter on my tongue and not all the rum punch in the world will sweeten my mouth today.
He paused as he stood, eager to be away, to take up the invitation to look for sport in the town. He had the grace to blush, when he asked me if I wouldn't join them, to drink, to play, to mingle sweat in some hired bed, where the whore becomes no more than the euphemism between them. That guilty blush cuts me more than the tremor of anticipation which I see in his hand, the same hand that oh so briefly touches the small of William's back as they pass through the narrow door together into sunlight. That blush, and the badly disguised grimace of relief that floods his face when I decline.
They are gone. I should have said farewell and meant it years ago. I have wasted time enough waiting to meet his eyes and see there some longing, anticipation, honest lust. Our couplings have been as sterile and pointless as the writhing of mermaids. And now he will not meet my eye at all, across this table.
Windward Series
Pairing: primarily Horatio/Archie but several others largely by implication
Author on LJ:
atropos_leeAuthor Website: Atropos' Locker
Why this must be read:
The Windward Series is a remarkable series of vignettes (Cherrystones and Lavender, Deptford Dolls, Kennedy, Disconsolate, Hornblower Reflective, Bush, Meditative, Beating to Windward) that explore the life and loves of Hornblower. Spanning a half century from childhood to ripe maturity, each vignette captures a relatively brief moment in time, each one of which is seen from a different point of view. Hornblower, Kennedy, Pellew and Bush all have their say and these stories provide an interesting insight into how these characters "see" Horatio who is the central figure around whom all of them orbit. They are quiet, understated meditations (not coincidentally the author uses words like "Reflective" and "Meditative" in the titles) and more than a little bittersweet. Rarely has Forester's vision of Hornblower as "the man apart" been better illustrated.
The series culminates with Beating to Windward, a complex, emotionally fraught story that brings together the threads of the previous vignettes as well as elements from the canon stories. It is a final accounting of sorts of the choices made and the prices paid, not only by Hornblower but by those who loved him and the reckoning is not an easy one to accept. It's a haunting story, credible and true to the characters depicted in the books and the screen and well worth reading.
Our greetings are effusive and heartfelt. Our partings are perforce, brief, cold and to the point. We say goodbye, and mean it, because we know we may bid farewell forever.
So you will understand why I should consider myself fortunate to have enjoyed my friend's companionship for eight years, separated though we may have been for some short stretch. That is more than any seaman could, or would, hope for.
As I watch him leave this room, to enjoy the fruits of his new station, not least the money which burns in his pockets, I know that one night he may shake the hand of a confidant, a man dear to him, as he descends to the boat on some commission, and learn hours, days, months later that he is dead, gone beyond recall, and his heart will break.
I also know now that man will not be me, and the realisation is bitter on my tongue and not all the rum punch in the world will sweeten my mouth today.
He paused as he stood, eager to be away, to take up the invitation to look for sport in the town. He had the grace to blush, when he asked me if I wouldn't join them, to drink, to play, to mingle sweat in some hired bed, where the whore becomes no more than the euphemism between them. That guilty blush cuts me more than the tremor of anticipation which I see in his hand, the same hand that oh so briefly touches the small of William's back as they pass through the narrow door together into sunlight. That blush, and the badly disguised grimace of relief that floods his face when I decline.
They are gone. I should have said farewell and meant it years ago. I have wasted time enough waiting to meet his eyes and see there some longing, anticipation, honest lust. Our couplings have been as sterile and pointless as the writhing of mermaids. And now he will not meet my eye at all, across this table.
Windward Series