Slicing through the swells of the South Seas, HMS Surprise heads for the Peruvian coast on a general-purpose patrol. It's wartime circa 1812, so Captain Aubrey captures en route an American ship and its French master before discharging his main mission: depositing pal and secret agent Dr. Maturin ashore so he can foment revolution against the Spanish. Thickly annealed to this basic action, layer after layer, is talk--stilted talk about swabbing decks; Rousseau; anatomy and medicine; minuets and quartets; the quality of wines--all intended to evoke shipboard life in the days of sail. Moby Dick this ain't, but O'Brian's not aiming for the ages: he strikes for readers hungering after nautical minutiae, which he has served up in nearly two dozen tales of sea salts, many starring the Aubrey/Maturin duo. O'Brian appeals to those who buy into his maritime formulas--and the publisher banks on 40,000 doing so this time. Gilbert Taylor
From Kirkus Reviews
Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin--the amiable, music-loving heroes of O'Brian's wonderful sail-powered series (The Truelove, The Letter of Marque, The Far Side of the World, et al.)--follow orders into the midst of revolutionary South American politics. His Majesty's government has become interested in Peru, where the Spanish vicegerency is tottering and the beastly French seek greater influence. Who better to send to see that, when the old order falls, the new government is Anglophilic than that extremely clever half-Spanish ship's surgeon and spy Stephen Maturin? Maturin, concert-quality cellist, and Captain Jack Aubrey, the best violinist ever to command a man-o'-war, have successfully concluded their business in the South Pacific and are on board Surprise, a privateer. Licensed to steal anything they find in the way of enemy shipping, the duo make it a profitable crossing, taking their biggest haul from the Yankee ship Franklin, which carries, in addition to tons of loot, one Monsieur Dutourd, who says he's just another string-player and utopian disciple of Rousseau but who seems entirely too interested in Peruvian politics. Dutourd presents a problem in that he and Maturin have crossed paths in Paris, and if they land in Lima together, Maturin's identity as a British spy may become known. Along with fretting about Dutourd, Dr. Maturin is concerned about his assistant and fellow naturalist the Rev. Mr. Martin, whose belief that lust in one's heart can result in venereal disease has brought him to death's door. When the sailors at last reach the shores of Peru, Dutourd escapes and Maturin's mission, complicated enough by the various revolutionary factions, becomes a real hair-raiser involving an arduous transit of the Andes, where he is spit on by llamas and sees the great condors. Literate, leisurely, and as charming as the rest of the series. The illustrated guide to sails and masts is worth the price by itself. (First printing of 40,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"I haven’t read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O’Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn’t stop."
― E. O. Wilson, Boston Globe
"Addictively readable."
― Chicago Tribune
"They're funny, they're exciting, they're informative. . . there are legions of us who gladly ship out time and time again under Captain Aubrey."
― The New Yorker
"lf Jane Austen had written rousing sea yarns, she would have produced something very close to the prose of Patrick O'Brian."
― Time
From the Back Cover
At the outset of this adventure filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin pursue a heavy American privateer through the Great South Sea. The strange color of the ocean water reminds Stephen of Homer's famous description, but it also portends a spectacular submarine volcanic eruption that will create a new island overnight and leave an indelible impression on the reader's imagination. Their ship, the Surprise, is now also a privateer, the better to escape diplomatic complications from Stephen's mission, which is to ignite the revolutionary tinder of South America. Jack will survive a desperate open-boat journey and come face to face with his illegitimate black son; Stephen, caught up in the aftermath of his failed coup, will flee for his life into the high, frozen wastes of the Andes; and Patrick O'Brian's brilliantly detailed narrative will reunite them at last in a breathtaking chase through storm seas and icebergs south of Cape Horn, where the hunters suddenly become the hunted. This is storytelling without models or equals in recent literature; critics have noted in O'Brian's great Aubrey/Maturin epic, now sixteen volumes in length, haunting echoes of such writers as Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, and Jane Austen. Some readers will respond to the undeniable excitement of the chases, storms, and battles, others to the precision of language, or the humor, or the wealth of erudition in Maturin's researches and conversations. But the truest mark of O'Brian's stature as a novelist may be the great number of readers who find fresh delights and deeper resonances in rereading his novels.
About the Author
One of our greatest contemporary novelists, Patrick O’Brian is the author of the twenty volumes of the best-selling Aubrey/Maturin series, as well as many other books, including Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso.
