This is the eighth of the Aubrey-Maturin series. It begins with some domestic scenes with Dr. Maturin and Diana Villiers, his great love for many years, dashing and elegant but quite different from himself.
He and Captain Aubrey put to sea in a ship of the line, the seventy-four gun Worcester. Aubrey's task is to go out to the Mediterranean to join the blockade of Toulon, a rather grim dreary and thankless job. The captain and indeed the crew are in low spirits due to a botched mission which took place in the last book. On the way the doctor has some intelligence work to do on the Spanish coast, he being an agent of the Admiralty on the side. ]]>
This, Mr. O'Brian's Seventh in the Aubrey-Maturin series, starts out with the touch-and-go completion of Aubrey's escape from the United States, with Maturin with him. The doctor had escaped with his life, and with the great love of his life, Diana Villiers. Hence the pun of the title.
Yet their on-again, off-again relationship still seems doomed to failure. Now that he has seen her again, Maturin's long-cherished love for her seems somehow to have cooled and gone out of his life.
We travel to Paris itself and eventually on a very delicate and dangerous mission to the Baltic. Unforeseen events ensue, with Aubrey and Maturin involved in an even more delicate situation, before the various threads of the story come together in closure. ]]>
The sixth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series is another wide-ranging affair, carrying the protagonists to new scenes and new perils halfway around the world.
The book first wraps up the story of the horrible old Leopard which Aubrey brings limping in to the Dutch East Indies station after leaving Desolation Island. He and Maturin are sent home and after a number of vicissitudes, during which the War of 1812 breaks out, they end up as prisoners in America where Maturin again meets his old love, Diana Villiers.
Much intrigue follows with their attempts to escape from Boston. For Maturin it becomes a matter of life and death, as his American counterparts in the secret service begin to do their best to eliminate him.
This highly exciting and suspenseful tale is written with the humor, humanity and scrupulous attention to historical detail that readers of Mr. O'Brian's works will recognize at once. He presents us with historical ship-to-ship actions, true to the record of the original logbooks and accounts of the participants as is his wont, not changing anything but placing his figures on board. ]]>
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I'm a bit past the middle in this book, which I find highly readable and entertaining. It's fun to anticipate the works of his I know, whether songs or movies Mr. Carmichael appears in. After the section of "To Have And Have Not" I had to go and watch the movie again.
Quite worth the read. ]]>
Here we have the fifth of Mr. O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin Series.
This is one of my favorites, a laughable thing for me to say since they all give me immense pleasure, even now on the third go round. I am reading them again so I can review each with perhaps a bit fresher eyes.
The book begins with both main characters more or less languishing by land. Aubrey desperately wishes for an active command and Maturin is deep in his addiction to laudanum, a reaction to again being rebuffed by the object of his affection, Diana Villiers. He seems washed up, both in his medical capacity and in the intelligence service line, after making severe blunders in both. Soon however they are off in the "horrible old Leopard ", an obsolete ship with an unlucky and unloved reputation. Perhaps Maturin can set himself to rights again by occupying himself with surreptitiously drawing information out of a female agent who is being transported as a prisoner to Australia.
From here we go on a rollicking voyage which never does make it to Australia, not in this book; into the impossibly mountainous seas circling the world around the then unknown Antarctica. Aubrey the consummate naval predator becomes the hunted one, as a larger, more powerful ship chases him through this chaotic world where one mistake means mortal disaster. There are icebergs, and finally Desolation Island itself.
A great story.
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Roger W.
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In previous books Mr. O'Brian has several times told us that he uses real ships and real battles for his fictional accounts. It's well known that he went to great lengths to make his stories ring with authenticity, reading the original logbooks of the vessels involved and the private papers of survivors.
In this the fourth episode of his Aubrey-Maturin series, he takes this method to the extreme - his whole book, not only one or two battles, is based on a historical campaign, making for some very dramatic reading.
The triumphs and setbacks of a little-known campaign against the French in the Indian Ocean form the basis for the action of this tale. Aubrey receives command of a squadron and has to find ways to overcome the odds. Two flawed captains he has under him make for interesting character studies.
We find O'Brian's wit and humor throughout, from the somewhat less than idyllic scene of Aubrey at home at the beginning, a fish out of water, through the vicissitudes of the campaign together with Maturin, to a typical O'Brian ending. He so often winds up his stories on a kind of anticipatory note, leading us into the next book and leaving us with a longing to see how the story will continue . . . ]]>
This, the third of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, gave me great pleasure in reading. This came surely in part by again meeting the old, well-loved figures of the previous two books. It's true too that this is my third reading of the series as a whole, so a kind of nostalgia was partly in play. However that was certainly not all there was to it.
This book includes some extremely harrowing as well as uplifting sections, as well as O'Brian's usual streak of humor. We have more of Maturin the secret agent, and more of his pursuit of the beautiful and willful Diana. Aubrey in his turn is still hoping for an early marriage to Miss Williams, with the approval of her grasping mother, who Maturin warmly describes as "the most unromantic beast that ever urged its squat,thick bulk across the face of the protesting earth."
For most of the book time and great distance separate them and what letters that are brought out by the odd ship are few and far between. Indeed, there's plenty of distance in this story where Aubrey travels farther afield than in any of the previous volumes, out to the Indian Ocean on a diplomatic mission, wherein much of the book's charm lies.
O'Brian uses his same eye for detail to describe the exotic locations and people living there as he does to bring to world of his 'wooden walls' to life.
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This is the second in O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, following Master and Commander.
I highly enjoyed every one of these books so it's hard to compare and rate them one to another. In fact, another O'Brian enthusiast -friend of mine considers each book to be but an episode in the cumulative 20-volume story.
Post Captain develops the characters of Aubrey and Maturin further from where we got to know them in the last book. We experience some of Maturin in his role as Admiralty agent, for example. Aubrey for his part is shown in his life and dealings on shore in much more detail, having a major crisis to respond to. We meet other characters who will become vitally important for the two friends, and watch as a huge case of jealousy builds throughout many chapters of the book, often a dark undertone to the action at hand.
The book is quite varied in locality. A good bit of it takes place back in England. We follow Aubrey and Maturin as they set up house as country squires with old shipmates. Again and again throughout the book Mr. O'Brian brings us back to this area, the southeast coast of England, from Portsmouth to Dover and back. Then too there is a rather wild interlude which has Maturin and Aubrey trekking across a corner of France and into Spain.
Woven between these plot elements are sections at sea, many and varied. The two men are sometimes mere passengers, sometimes in their normal roles as captain and ship's surgeon, and then again even as prisoners. There is thunderous action, even a near-mutiny.
And below all is a great personal crisis between them which threatens to destroy their friendship and ultimately they themselves.
As all other of Mr. O'Brian's books this one is written with great attention to period detail, be it aboard ship, on land or even in contemporary language and manners. He loves to bring the long-ago world alive for us, even down to minor characters such as the down-and-out literary hack turned failed highwayman. ]]>
I am embarking on yet another reread of this series, especially to write reviews of the individual volumes.
This first book in the story pulled me right in, and it was an impatient wait I had before the second book came in on order. To begin with, stories of ships and the sea have always held a fascination for me, and Mr. O'Brian painstakingly recreates this long-gone world in meticulous detail. This begins with myriad details about life on shipboard and continues down through people's manner of speech, food and drink, societal attitudes, everything.
There is a huge number of unfamiliar words used throughout, mostly dealing with the workings of the ships themselves, and when I realized I was in for the long haul I ordered a copy of A Sea of Words, Third Edition: A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O'Brian (Paperback)which was extremely helpful.
However, it's the two main characters and the friendship which springs up between them, that make the story so enjoyable. They are so poles apart in their characters and attitudes that we the readers can't but enjoy the interplay between them, which Mr. O'Brian so clearly delineates. Dr. Maturin is a thin, meager individual, not much meat on his bones. He is a 'very learned cove', introspective and analytical, yet his passions lie not far beneath this Age of Enlightenment exterior. Captain Aubrey on the other hand lives very much in the present - the man of action, responding brilliantly at sea to the myriad shifting variables of a ship to ship action, whereas on land he sometimes seems as a fish out of water. A pleasure-loving man, he tends to always be bordering on the obese. Even minor characters receive this attention to detail. There is humor, there are strong emotions, and of course much authentic action at sea in the Mediterranean here in this first installment of the 20-volume Aubrey-Maturin series. ]]>