Customer Reviews

Bombay Marines: An Adam Horne Adventure

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This is one of those novels you save for when you are stuck for a long period of time in an airport, or at home on a rainy evening with nothing much on TV. While not great literature, it is an interesting tale. The events might seem unlikely in modern terms, but this was in 1761 when people in far-off colonies did not always follow the back-home rules.

Captain Adam Horne receives secret orders to kidnap a prisoner from England's own military forces. The details of the plot have been used before, i.e., he recruits inmates from the prison in Bombay, takes them to a secret base for training, and lets the convicts redeem themselves by carrying out a highly dangerous mission (does this sound like "the Dirty Dozen"). Captain Horne is in the Bombay Marines, an independent naval force of the East India Company which owes its loyalty to the company first and to England second (this was the company largely responsible for the American Revolution by putting the company's interests ahead of everything else).

The details of the plot are interesting and, perhaps, reflect the conditions of that time period, e.g., dangerous weather, a high death rate in overseas service, harsh discipline (the captain's word was law and people could be executed with no recourse to appeals), etc. This was during one of the many wars between England and France. The Bombay Marines fought the French, somewhat independently of the British Army and Navy, to give the East India Company domination and control of trade with India. It was all about money. The author provides a small map, and a short afterward with a few comments on the history of the time period.

I'll give Porter Hill credit for one thing--he took a different tack (pun intended) for his Adam Horne character. Horne's not a great icon in the Hornblower/Aubrey tradition, and he's not even in the Royal Navy.

In this book, we meet the basic characters that appear in this and two other books. It's sort of a Hornblower-meets-Dirty-Dozen story of a ragtag group of convicts given a second chance on a risky mission.

The story is paced very quickly, which is probably a good thing, since the writing isn't terribly strong, nor is the plotting all that great. But it's decent escapist fare, and if like me you've read (and read and read) CS Forester and Patrick O'Brian and just need something else to entertain you, this isn't a bad choice.

Certainly of Porter Hill's trilogy, this is the strongest entry.

If you take this book at face value it is a delightful read. While no masterpiece it was entertaining. I had no problem following the plot or the story line. So quit-cha-belly-aching!

Likening this book to the Hornblower series is an understandable (though untrue) bit of publisher's hype (that's why I bought it) but another reviewer said "it was more akin to the Aubrey/Maturin series". Hate to think anyone still struggling with the end of that series would buy it on that basis. Yes, they both feature sailing ships but that's about all. The book is poorly plotted, has no believable characters, seems rife with anacronisms, and provides none of the period texture which is key to good historical fiction. The book reads like the author wrote 5 seperate drafts, then accidently dropped them all on the floor and never quite got the pages sorted again.

Billed in the style of Horatio Hornblower, Porter Hill's characters are more reminiscent of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series. Naval adventure from the 1800's in an easily digestible pulp form.