During the Napoleonic wars, Captain Jack Aubrey reaches middle age
and is beached with domesticity: wife, daughters, mother-in-law,
several servants, all packed into a little cottage like the Black
Hole - and on half-pay. Britain's out to dominate France in the
South Indian ocean, and so when Jack is offered command of the
newly refitted frigate Boadicea, he jumps at the chance to escape.
What's more, he'll be with some great old friends, including ship's
surgeon Stephen Maturin - with whom he loves to fiddle two-part
Mozart inventions over port in the captain's cabin. It's that kind
of book, shot through with unobtrusive culture and period texture
that flows like a serenade; even the nautical detail - telescopes
and stores, regs and discipline - have a lived-in fray of poetic
experience and warm handiness. Jack's job is to round the Cape of
Good Hope and take the islands of La Reunion and Mauritius from the
French. His biggest headache comes after being made temporary
commodore and being given his first command of a whole squadron of
ships: the captains under him are a nervewracking, neurotic and
brutal lot, and all are vividly drawn with every crotchet intact
and rolling eyeball secure. They have real nerve to them, a crazy
inner skip to their hearts, and O'Brian captures it all in language
deep with detail and the poetry of fact on blue-water currents
under the trades. (Kirkus Reviews)
Captain Jack Aubrey is ashore on half-pay without a command — until his friend, and occasional intelligence agent, Stephen Maturin, arrives with secret orders for Aubrey to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope, under a Commodore’s pennant. But the difficulties of carrying out his orders are compounded by two of his own captains — Lord Clonfert, a pleasure-seeking dilettante, and Captain Corbett, whose severity can push his crews to the verge of mutiny.
Based on the actual campaign of 1810 in the Indian Ocean, O’Brian’s attention to detail of eighteenth-century life ashore and at sea is meticulous. This tale is as beautifully written and as gripping as any in the series; it also stands on its own as a superlative work of fiction.
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