Customer Reviews

Honor This Day

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"honor This Day" is spread in time and space. As usual, Vice Admiral Richard Bolitho is given seemingly impossible orders; too small of a force; and treacherous political grounds to operate in. The story starts with bolitho being sent to Antigua to try and capture one of the Spanish treasure flottilas so as to harm Spain's and France's war efforts while helping out his own side. Of course, Bolitho succeeds and does it while leading a very small group of sailors on the "cutting out" expedition.

However, that is just the pretext for the real action here. While in Antigua, Bolitho meets with an old flame of his Catherine Pateja. She is now married to the King's Inspector General who happens to be in Antigua sd well. For some unexplained and unknown reason, she is still deeply in love with Bolitho, while he is suffering from the breakup of his marriage to Belinda. Of course, in those days, there was no such thing as a divorce so the central problem of the book is posed to the readers.

One thing leads to another, and finally Bolitho rescues Kate from a bunch of pirates. This must be done so that Bolitho has a reason to seek out Kate in his future adventures.

The second part of the book has Bolitho posted to the Meditteranean in supposed relief of Tom Herrick in Malta. However, this happens to occur in September and October of 1805. So, Nelson is in hot pursuit of Admiral Villeneuve across that Atlantic. Bolitho and Kate meet again in London - with a goofy story of how he has to rescue her from an insane asylum/jail. Their great love is rekindled and a lot of questions are answered about how the Antigua situation came to be.

The book ends with the obligatory big naval battle. As usual, Bolitho commands a small squadron which battles against a much superior enemy. To make it seem somewhat plausible, Alexander Kent introduces the idea that the Spanish squadron was hurrying to join Villeneuve and that Bolitho's stopping them was a factor in the victory in the Battle of Trafalgar.

I am not a fan of Kent's romantic writings. The author is very good in his descriptions of life at sea; at what happens during the battles in that age of sail; and of how life was like in the Royal Navy of the time. With time, however, and as Bolitho climbs up the ranks, the focus of the books is becoming more political and personal. In this book bolitho is still struggling with his eye injury, a failing marriage, and a great romance - the guy is almost fifty years old but he is still prancing around the world, participating in sword battles, and behaving like a twenty year old stud. Not very likely! So, I downgraded this book for those reasons.