Let us beat to quarters and join Jack and Stephen on the H.M.S. "Surprise," a Royal Navy frigate during the Napoleonic Wars. Captain Jack Aubrey transports an ambassador to The Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), while Stephen stops at remote locations along the 30,000 mile journey to conduct scientific experiments. As we sail around the world with the crew of “Surprise,” we drop anchor in Madeira, Bombay, Calcutta, St. Paul's Rocks, and the coast of Brazil, to refit, to resupply, or to observe flora and fauna. Let us sail the ocean blue to the far side of the world and return to exchange our hardtack for the roast beef of Old England. This is the third in a series of twenty adventures involving Captain Jack Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, doctor and naturalist. It had been five years since I last read O’Brian, and I was grateful to regain my sea-legs and, without a hint of seasickness, experience a literary adventure of the highest order. Indeed, O’Brian obliged me by providing glosses of recurring characters and recaps of previous events. The “HMS Surprise” is the best so far in this excellent series.Jack is buoyant with a natural authority that keeps him from having to resort to fear-based leadership. “Some people like their deck to look like a ballroom, so do I, but it must be a fighting ballroom. Gunnery and seamanship come first. And there never was a ship that fought well lest she was a happy ship. I hate dirt and slovenliness but I hate a flash ship, all spit and polish with no fighting spirit.” Stephen’s confidence in Jack’s seamanship was as blind as Jack’s belief in Stephen’s medical omniscience. Jack dominates the scenes aboard ship; Stephen dominates on land. Stephen is introspective and subtle. A wiry man, he is strong in constitution but not muscle. Whenever permitted, Stephen goes ashore to explore nature and to absorb local customs before returning to the ship at the last moment with a menagerie of specimens, one of which was a very lively sloth. "Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth and cried, 'Jack, you have debauched my sloth.'" We see Jack’s battle face when he organizes a spirited defense of the China Fleet (British merchant ships of the East India Company laden with Chinese treasures) against the superior firepower of the French Squadron. Watch out for those wicked splinters, shipmate! French cannon throw heavy iron balls at our hull causing enormous flocks of splinters to spall away from the ship into our soft flesh. "Three guns had been dismounted, and splinters, bits of carriage, bits of rail, booms, shattered boats littered the decks as far aft as the mainmast, together with scores of hammocks torn from their netting: the jibboom lurched from side to side, its cap shot through: cannon-balls, scattered from their racks and garlands, rumbled about the heaving deck: but far more dangerous were the loose guns running free--concentrated, lethal weight, gone mad. He plunged into the disorder forward--few officers, little co-ordination--catching up a bloody hammock as he ran. Two tons of metal, once the cherished larboard chaser, poised motionless on the top of the roll, ready to rush back across the deck and smash its way through the starboard side: he clapped the hammock under it and whipped a line round the swell of its muzzle, calling for men to make it fast to a stanchion; and as he called a loose 36 lb shot ran crack against his ankle, bringing him down." But it is the quiet moments I enjoy the most, such as when Jack, looking across the desolate ocean, muses about building a future home with his fiancé, Sophie. “I should never get tired of fresh green stuff…. He drifted into a reverie, seeing trim rows of cabbages, cauliflowers, leeks; stout and well grown, untouched by caterpillars, wireworms, leatherjackets or the dread onion fly; a trout-stream at the bottom of the garden with good pasture along its banks, and on the good pasture a mild pair of cows, Jersey cows. Following the stream down he saw the Channel at no great distance, with ships upon it; and through the temperate haze upon this sea he was conscious of Stephen smiling at him.” O’Brian’s writing is mannered, precise, and ironic. Though many comparisons have been made between O’Brian and Jane Austen, I enthusiastically embrace this cliché. O’Brian poetically describes elegant ships cutting through water, and he will make you feel the “beard of wind torn spray.” He plots swiftly and drops us in the middle of the action of a new scene and then gradually reveals to us what is going on, sometimes through dialogue. Be patient. We are not adrift and seldom becalmed. I identify with both Jack and Stephen: the physical and the mental; the active and the contemplative; the passion and the logic. Their composite makes an ideal person. Although this reviewer, as a boy, would have wanted to be Jack, this reviewer as 47-year-old identifies most with Stephen. Thus, when I read, I picture Russell Crowe (from the film) as Jack, but I cast myself as Stephen Maturin from here on through all 20 books.Are you ready there below, my literate shipmates? Fear not, you will get the nautical lingo. Screw your courage to the masthead because elegance and adventure and submergence in a world of water and spice await you. "'Mr Pullings, all hands to make sail. Maintopgallants'l, stuns'ls and royal; and scandalise the foretops'l yard.' "'Maintopgallants'l, stuns'ls and royal, and scandalise foretops'l yard it is, sir.'" Plot Outline for Previous Readers (view spoiler)[ We came on a fool’s errand. The ambassador dies when the journey is nearly complete and Aubrey turns the ship around. He falls in with an English fleet under attack from a French naval squadron and leads a spectacular and successful defense before landing at Calcutta for repairs. In Calcutta, Maturin engages Diana's lover in a pistol duel and kills his opponent while receiving a dreadful wound to the chest. Maturin subsequently extracts the ball by himself and the two men return home to discover that the honorable Sophie eagerly awaits Aubrey's return in anticipation of marriage; the beautiful but faithless Diana, however, has met yet another rich young man and absconded with him to America, leaving Maturin depressed and alone. (hide spoiler)]
I envision O'Brian writing languidly day and night among a midden of dusty, open, clothbound primary-source naval literature, a fire greedily stoked, and a single-bulb desklamp under which he pensively hunts and cross references ancient medical and nautical terms. O'Brian's at his best when his mind is at sea. Unfortunately, once again, Patrick O'Brian restrains his wonderful gift of describing nautical action, and instead develops the relationship between Captain Jack Aubrey and surgeon Stephen Maturin. In part 3 of 22 of the Aubrey/Maturin series, O'Brian limply limns a rather boring story in H.M.S. Surprise. There is a tantalizing chapter of blue-seas naval exchange between Aubrey and the unprotected East China fleet and the stalking French Admiral Linois. But, it's only a glancing blow, and both fleets sail away repairing sails and broadsides. There's another chapter about a wicked south sea storm that rages around the Cape of Good Hope that's beautifully, vividly written, but then it's over.O'Brian has no modern peer that portrays naval life in such lilting, but direct imagery. His knowledge of everything shipwright is encyclopedic, from taffrail to foretop jibsail, from keel to pendant, and every ratline, course, knot, davit, strake, block, and bulwark inbetween. He also has a mastery of early 18th century words and expressions.I don't understand why, after several thousand reviews, O'Brians' stories achieve a 4+ star rating for each of his novels. Beautifully written, yes; but active, pageturning, no!! If O'Brian unleashed his active voice for even a quarter of the story, he'd have me singing his praises and joining book clubs. Instead, his stories of love and relationship, though interesting and realistic in timepiece language, deaden the action for me, and can only warrant 3 stars.I'm taking a break reading the Aubrey/Maturin series, and hoping that part 4, sometime in the offing, will reward me with a 4-5 star story in these 400+ page books. They each take dozens of hours to read, and the return is not what I wish. Good quotes:The sun beat down from its noon-day height upon Bombay, imposing a silence upon that teeming city, so that even in the deepest bazaars the steady beat of the surf could be heard--the panting of the Indian Ocean, dull ochre under a sky too hot to be blue, a sky waiting for the south-west monsoon and at the same moment far, far to the westward, far over Africa and beyond, it heaved up to the horizon and sent a fiery dart to strike the limp royals and topgallants of the 'Surprise' as she lay becalmed on the oily swell a little north of the line and some thirty degrees west of Greenwich. (p. 98)Jack stepped on to the western rail and looked down into the water. It was so clear that he could see the light passing under the frigate's keel: her hull projected a purple underwater shadow westwards, sharp head and stern but vague beneath because of her trailing skirts of weeds--a heavy growth in spite of her new copper, for they had been a great while south of the tropic. No ominous lurking shape, however; only a school of shining little fishes and a few swimming crabs. "Come on, then," he said, diving in.The sea was warmer than the air, but there was refreshment in the rush of bubbles along his skin, the water tearing through his hair, the clean salt taste in his mouth. Looking up he saw the silvery undersurface, the 'Surprise's' hull hanging down through it and the clean copper near her water-line reflecting an extraordinary violet into the sea: then a white explosion as Stephen shattered the mirror, plunging bottom foremost from the gangway, twenty feet above. (p. 100)"The nymphs in green? Delightful girls.""It is clear you have been a great while at sea, to call those sandy-haired coarse-featured pimply short-necked thick-fingered vulgar-minded lubricious blockheads by such a name. Nymphs, forsooth. If they were nymphs, they must have had their being in a tolerably rank and stagnant pool: the wench on my left had an ill breath, and turning for relief I found her sister had a worse: and the upper garment of neither was free from reproach. Worse lay below, I make no doubt. 'La, sister,' cries the one to the other, breathing across me--vile teeth: and 'La, sister,' cries the other. I have no notion of two sisters wearing the same clothes, the same flaunting meretricious gawds, the same torture Gorgon curls low over their brutish criminal foreheads; it bespeaks a superfetation of vulgarity, both innate and studiously acquired. And when I think that their teeming loins will people the East...Pray pour me out another cup of coffee. Confident brutes." (p. 278) New words: glabrous, pederasty, meretricious, nonpareil, imposthumate, purulent, extravasation, nugatory, sennit, bombinate, stridulate, lustration, mephitic, lubricious, superfetation, vaticination
Do You like book H.M.S. Surprise (1991)?
This time Aubrey and Maturin make a long and difficult passage from Brazil to India, venturing close to Antarctica in the process. Albatrosses, storms at sea, a great battle against the French in an attempt to protect a East Indian merchant fleet, and a strong cast of supporting characters make this a great read with some moments of deep sadness. "I am of her caste" was a line that brought me to tears, and the focus on Stephen's internal life (which Jack is often not privy to, or truly able to comprehend, one suspects)makes this a very moving read at times. The friendship between Jack and Stephen remains fascinating and complex, and their relationships with the two women in their life, Sophie and Diana, continue to be rich, nuanced, and full of tension.
—Jennifer
Here's how Patrick O'Brian ropes you into these books:Make the beginning and the end so good, so ridiculously compelling, that you completely forget about the bombastic, flowery, tediously overwrought writing throughout much of the middle. I enjoy the hell out of these audio books, but I have a feeling that if I had to actually sit down and read them, I'd go a little insane and possibly hoarse from screaming, 'OH MY GOD GET ON WITH IT ARE YOU KIDDING ME SHUT UP'. Brevity was not the author's strong suit, is what I'm saying. Having gotten the whining out of the way, I'll end as usual in this series with how much I appreciate the nautical detail and the incredibly intricate research that clearly went into accurately describing 18th- and 19th-century British naval culture and customs. Nowhere is this better displayed than during the battle scenes. This third installment also had a lot more going on personally with all of the characters, which I felt added more depth than the second book. As for Patrick Tull's narration, I decided to give him a try for this book. I'll be going back to Simon Vance's versions for the rest of the series. Patrick Tull was inconsistent with his characters and spent a lot of time reminding me of Stewie from The Family Guy. That is NOT the voice that I want superimposed on any character that I have to pretend to take seriously for ~14 unabridged hours.
—Jason , etc.
3 – 3.5 starsAs the rating attests I enjoyed this book, but I am not sure if I will ever be one of the rabid legion of fans enamoured of Patrick O’Brian’s work. I certainly enjoyed this book much more than I did Master and Commander which, quite frankly, I found opaque and uninteresting. I also skipped over the second book in the series since Aubrey and Maturin on land worrying about their love lives didn’t really seem like the next best point to re-try getting into the series. For some reason I can’t quite fathom I’ve always felt a little guilty about not liking the first book and there’s something deep down in me that really wants to like this series. There is, after all, quite a bit to love: two well-drawn main characters who complement and contrast each other very nicely in both their skills and demeanor, a detailed (one might say perhaps a bit too detailed) glimpse into the minds and manners of Napoleonic Europe (with obviously a decided concentration on naval procedures and jargon), and enough adventure and excitement to generally keep things interesting. Of course, there are slow points and between naval engagements or chases, duels, and moments of intense physical or emotional intensity the calm can be somewhat soporific. I suppose this is a nice parallel to the sea voyages that comprise the bulk of the narrative: moments of intense action and apprehension leavened with days and days of routine and boredom. That’s not quite fair, I guess, I certainly didn’t find myself yawning too much during this book, but it is true that events often move at a sedate pace for the lion’s share of the pages.As the story opens we find ourselves thrust into the midst of a meeting of politicians and naval muckety-mucks the result of which will be a major disappointment for Captain Jack Aubrey and a significant impediment to the health and possible continuance of Dr. Stephen Maturin’s life. Loose lips sink ships, and they also put His Majesty’s spies into tight corners. After some period scene setting with Jack’s fiancée Sophie and an initial adventure involving torture, rescue and escape the upshot is that Jack and Stephen are back at sea, nominally for the purpose of ferrying an envoy from Britain to the East Indies. From here we are treated to the requisite scenes of naval life, Stephen’s obsession with natural philosophy and both scientific and cultural observation, forays into the culture of the Indian subcontinent, and woman troubles for both Jack and Stephen. Add to that a duel, the weathering of some truly monumental forces of nature, and a surprise naval engagement and you’ve pretty much got everything you ought to expect from an Aubrey-Maturin novel.The long and the short of it is that I enjoyed this novel quite a bit, certainly enough to more or less efface the bad taste I had after reading the first one. I definitely plan on continuing to follow Jack and Stephen’s further adventures, though I have not yet been converted to the level of hardcore fandom. One note: I alternated between listening to the Patrick Tull narrated audio version of the book and reading my electronic version. Overall I enjoyed Tull’s performance (it really can’t be called anything short of that), though his pauses and occasionally prolonged drawl did make me stumble from time to time.
—Terry
