Since discovering Georgette Heyer and the Beth Brower, I haven't really found an author that I care to pursue. I didn't know where to go next with new books. Still, onwards... but not this week. This week it's backwards, since I'm in the mood for a good book, so we have another reread this week.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
This books takes up the story some months after the conclusion of Desolation Island. In it we meet once again some of the characters from that story. Desolation Island ended with the horrible old Leopard getting ready to continue on its voyage after making repairs on the desolate "Desolation Island" in the Indian ocean. This story starts with their arrival in the Pulo Batang in Indonesia, after having visited Australia. Captain Aubrey and Doc Maturin are sent off to England, in a fast dispatch ship, only to encounter a mishap at sea, end up on the HMS Java, just prior its battle with the USS Constitution in the War of 1812. Not to give too much away, the Java loses that battle and Aubrey and Maturin are taken prisoner and end up in Boston, waiting to be exchanged for captured American officers. Boston proves to be a dangerous place for Doc Maturin for several reasons, not the least being that there are French secret agents in Boston who want him dead.
I have raved about these stories in the past. And while one may, at first glance consider them in the same category as a hundred other titles concerning the war at sea during the Napoleonic era, they stand, in my opinion, head and shoulder above all of them. O'Brian paints his novels on a far wider canvas, painting with a unique style and skill, the society, places, and human characters of the time. His is a unique style of writing, one that is authentically not modern, but neither is it obscure. It is witty and deep in turn. Characters are vividly drawn, as our the locales. He offers many insights into humanity. Plus his stories have a sense of what we now call "found family" since, over the course of a decade and a half of war at sea, with crews and officers changing ships frequently, you get a sense that the Royal Navy was one large family, with crews and officers finding old shipmates on every ship they encounter. And as such, familiar characters come and go with each book.
This is another series of books that I can not recommend high enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment