Customer Reviews

Tested by Fate (The Nelson and Emma Trilogy)

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Tested by Fate is the second of a three part series that follows the history of Horatio Nelson and Emma, Lady Hamilton.

Donachie has obviously read his history and put a lot of meat on the bones provided by the many biographies in print about these two individuals. The novel's chapters alternate between the lives of the two until, of course, they finally merge at the end of this second volume.

While the outline of the book(s) is historical acurate (but embelished as one would expect with a novel), Mr. Donachie could stand to pay a bit more attention to detail. An example of this is where he writes "Pasco [a midshipman accompanying Nelson on a visit to Adm. Caracciolo's flagship and who eventually would be his signal Lt. at Trafalgar who suggested the final wording of his famous signal] was enthralled as he listened to Nelson, watching his hands as they traced the various ships' postions on the hammock netting." Sounds great; unfortunately by the time of this paragraph Nelson has already been to Tenerife and lost his right arm. Hard to see how his hands, plural, could trace anything!

If you like O'Brian's approach to nautical detail in fiction based on fact you will love these books and willingly overlook such slight transgressions!

I read "On a Making Tide", book one of the Nelson and Emma trilogy, and was anxious to read book two. Turns out the first 272 pages of book two are the last 272 pages of book one. To my mind, that is not fair.
The story is well written and interesting but I expect to see fresh writing as I go from one volume to the next.