HMS Surprise by Patrick O'Brian

Oh yeah! I'm on a roll here! I'm tearing my way through this great series.

However, before I tell you what I think of this book, I found this fun quiz on one of the many many litblogs I read.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next three sentences in your journal along with these instructions.


So here goes -- the nearest book, of course, being HMS Surprise:

"Hands wear ship," said the lieutenant of the watch, more from form than anything else, for not only did the Lively have a crew that had worked together for years, but also she had carried out this manoeuvre several hundred times in this very stretch of water and the order was scarcely needed. Routine had taken the edge off the Livelies' zeal, but nevertheless the boatswain had to call out "Handsomely, handsomely, now, with that bleeding sheet"; for the crew had been brought to such a pitch of silent efficiency that the frigate ran the risk of darting her jib-boom over the taffrail of the Melpomene, her next ahead, whose talents and sailing qualities could not have recommended her anywhere.

However, round they went in succession, each wearing in the spot where her leader had turned; they hauled their wind and re-formed their rigid line, heading for Giens once more, Naiad, Melpomene, Lively.

So there you have it, folks - a sample of Patrick O'Brian's knack for the long sentence which is at once replete with incomprehensible naval jargon and still very readable.

That was fun - I think I might do it for future books I write about here.

Anyway, about the book. In this installment, Captain Aubrey finally gets a decent command -- although he doesn't see it that way. He is asked to take an ambassador to China, an extremely long and treacherous sea-voyage which has little possibility of taking home the prize that he needs to help clear his massive debt so he can marry his sweetheart. Meanwhile, Dr Maturin continues to pine for a woman who's no good for him, but manages to distract himself with the local wildlife wherever he goes (and I really do mean wildlife - this guy is crazy for animals, insects, plants, you name it). He manages to acquire two odd pets before the journey is over, and they go over a little better than the bees he installed in the Captain's cabin on the last voyage.

I love these guys! I want to take Dr Maturin home and clean him up and feed him. All he needs to do is play his cello for me and I'll consider it a fair exchange.

Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian

In this sequel to Master and Commander, aside from the obvious promotion of Jack Aubrey to Post Captain (gee, way to pick a title, there!), plenty of other stuff happens to our pals Aubrey and Maturin. They fall in love, fight over a woman, Aubrey is chased by debt collectors, and Maturin begins a potentially promising career as a spy. Who could possibly suspect an eccentric intellectual who forgets to wash his face and has moss growing on his overcoat?

Though the naval jargon continues to be totally incomprehensible in book two, I continue to find the story of Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin utterly intriguing. There's something compelling about their exciting, romantic, cramped and dirty life on board one of Nelson's navy ships that keeps me reading, even while I continue to have no clue what a xebec is. (I have a feeling that if Hornblower is still reading this blog she will be able to fill me in.)

I was saying to my husband the other day that I feel like the universe has conspired to introduce me to this fabulous genre, naval adventure fiction. In spite of having many other interesting books on my shelf at the moment, I am gobbling up the Aubrey-Maturin series; and when I found myself without an Aubrey-Maturin book one day last week, I picked up the first book in the Horatio Hornblower series from the library at my university. So now you can consider yourself warned.

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

I'll tell you what I said to two librarians the other night about this book - "It's mostly incomprehensible, but the story is pretty good."

I had to read this for a school project, if you can believe it, and for the most part it was a pretty decent choice. Captain Jack Aubrey is a likeable dunce with a real knack for taking "prizes" (ie, capturing Spanish ships) and his sidekick, Dr. Stephen Maturin, is a charming intellectual who doesn't mind getting his hands and clothes covered in blood on a regular basis. What's not to like about these guys?

Nothing much happens in this book, but it sets up the extremely lengthy series to follow, where Aubrey and Maturin have many exciting adventures. Aubrey gets his first command, bumps into Maturin on the street and convinces him to be his ship's surgeon, and then away they float with their crew of assorted misfits, cruising around the coast of Spain, shooting cannonballs, and blathering away at each other in their incomprehensible naval lingo. I think I'd have been able to be much more absorbed in this novel if the publishers had taken the time to provide a glossary. As it is, they've included a lovely labeled diagram of the various sails on a ship, but nothing about the ropes, wooden beams, and other parts of a ship that are mentioned over and over again - let alone the various different types of ships.

Throne of Jade and Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

I promised myself that I wouldn't let this blog be a "chore" and so far it really hasn't been, but this semester has been unbelievably hectic for me and I'm falling behind on my book reviews. So about these two books I'll just say a few words.

These books were awesome. Read this series!

More detailed commentary will be coming on future books...

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

I used to be quite the fantasy reader, but it's been a long time since I've felt compelled to seek out a new series. It just seemed like every book I picked up was a rehash of the same tired old themes. However, when bookshelves of doom highlighted (ok, gushed about) Naomi Novik's new Temeraire series and mentioned that Peter Jackson liked these books so much that he bought the film rights, I knew I needed to check this series out.

If His Majesty's Dragon is anything to judge by, this is a series to get even the most jaded former fantasy reader back into the genre. Set in an alternate Napoleonic era in which British and French forces vie for supremacy of the skies as well as the sea, complete with a separate branch of the military for dragons and their riders, the books focus on navy captain Will Laurence and his dragon partner, Temeraire. It's sort of a cross between the Dragonriders of Pern series and books like Master and Commander. Novik pulls off the addition of dragons to this universe very well - Temeraire and his counterparts are believable and appealing creatures. Laurence himself, with his affection for his dragon and his strong sense of honour and duty, oozes sex appeal in a Mr. Darcy sort of way. Together, they must defend Britain from the French forces determined to conquer their island neighbour.

Watch this space for my thoughts on the sequels, Throne of Jade and Black Powder War!

Darcy's Diary by Amanda Grange

I picked this up at the gift shop at the Jane Austen House museum during my recent visit to England. It was a fun and well-written, if necessarily predictable, retelling of the Pride and Prejudice story from the point of view of Mr Darcy. As such, I don't have too much to say about it - if you haven't read Jane Austen's original, I suggest you go and do that rather than read this first. Then you can pick up this book and enjoy reading the story again, from a slightly different perspective, complete with the "happily ever after" chapters at the end, in which the author gets to indulge her fantasies (in an occasionally un-Austen-like manner) about Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage.

I liked Darcy's Diary far better than the hideous and embarrassing Mr Darcy Takes a Wife, which I do not recommend you pick up if you want something told in the same style and spirit as Jane Austen's stories. If only I'd taken note of the title of the other book recommended by the Jane Austen House employee - I'd enjoy reading more P&P sequels, but it's hard to figure out which ones are worth my time.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

"I go to the cinema," said Kay; ... "Sometimes I go in half-way through, and watch the second half first. I almost prefer them that way -- people's pasts, you know, being so much more interesting than their futures. Or perhaps that's just me..."

This book is set in WWII-era London: that's one point in its favour. It's written by an author who has been glowingly recommended to me: point two.

Nothing interesting happens in the first 100 pages (see? I was generous and gave it double the usual time to prove itself to me): minus one point. The characters are dull: minus two points.

Oops, this book is a zero.

Seriously, though... I expected a lot more from a writer who has had glowing critical praise and commercial success. I didn't expect a book that was, frankly... just plain uninteresting.

These people, Kay, Viv, Duncan and Helen, all seem to lead very dull lives in post-war London. There are occasional hints that they had more interesting pasts, but for the most part they do boring things (described in far too much meticulous detail), and they have boring, stilted conversations; neither seems to do much of anything to move the story forward. They have boring love affairs that are full of petty jealousy and boring friendships that are full of insecurity.

It looks like if I'd stuck with this book for another 60 pages, the book would have taken me back to 1944 and perhaps given me a little more interesting information about these dull people's mysterious pasts. I wonder what it would have been like if I'd taken Kay's advice and started the story halfway through; but then, what if I found out that their pasts were just as boring as their future seems to be?

Well, perhaps that's just me.