The Ionian Mission by Patrick O'Brian

Captain Aubrey and his pal the doctor are sent off to join a blockade near Toulon, France. After a few months of mind-numbing blockade action, their ship falls apart and they get to reunite with their beloved Surprise. As Aubrey sails off on a dangerous and politically vital mission to enlist Turkish aid in the war against France, he gets to prove that when you put a good Captain and crew on a good ship, lots of exciting action ensues. Prizes galore await Jack and his shipmates in the Ionian Sea!

This wasn't a particularly memorable installment in this series but it was still an enjoyable read.

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.