O'Brian (Desolation Island, 1979, etc.) brings back Captain Jack
Aubrey, who is no longer in the Royal Navy but nonetheless still
sails against Napoleon. Aubrey is a stern man these days, having
been dismissed from the service for false charges of stock fraud.
His old friend Stephen Maturin, however, having bought Aubrey's old
frigate Surprise, now uses her as a private ship of war (a letter
of marque) to cruise upon the enemy and gives Aubrey command of it.
The brainy Maturin, secretly an agent in British naval and
political intelligence, is the perfect foil for Aubrey, a man
socially unsure of himself and pursued by creditors when ashore but
on deck beloved by his crew and revered as Lucky Jack Aubrey.
Maturin himself has become estranged from his wife, Diana, and
hopes to win her back while Aubrey, also married with children,
must dig his way out of disgrace. These personal worries add fiber
to the characterizations, and the play of strengths and frailties
between the two seamen (Maturin is overly fond of tincture of
brandy-and-opium) glows with humanity. Indeed, O'Brian is a
brilliant stylist of sea-historicals, his every sentence sensuous
and emerging from saltwater as naturally as the leap of a flying
fish. After a few preliminary skirmishes at sea, with his privateer
painted up for deception of the enemy, Jack takes a pistol ball in
the back and loses half his blood at St. Martin's, where he has
triumphed over the French. While the House of Commons entertains
reinstating Jack, who sails to the Gulf of Riga, Maturin goes off
to Sweden to find reconciliation with Diana. Authentic and
engaging. (Kirkus Reviews)
Jack Aubrey is a naval officer, a post-captain of experience and capacity. When 'The Letter of Marque' opens he has been struck off the Navy list for a crime he has not committed.
With Aubrey is his friend and ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, who is also an unofficial British intelligence agent. Maturin has bought for Aubrey his old ship, the 'Surprise' as a 'private man-of-war'. Together they sail on a voyage which, if successful, might restore Aubrey to the rank, and the raison d'etre whose loss he so much regrets.
"The success of this great sequence comes from the conviction and huge enthusiasm which O'Brian had for his history. Everything changed when he realised that the Napoleonic wars were the Englishman's Troy tales, as historically and mythically rich, and imaginatively exploitable as the story that produced 'The Iliad'."
W.L. WEBB, 'Guardian'
"From the opening page I was addicted to what I judge to be one of the greatest cycles of storytelling in the English language."
WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE, 'Daily Telegraph'
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