This time out, Captain Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon Stephen
Maturin limp home from America for a brief rest before sailing to
the Baltic to subvert the occupying Catalan troops - and then to
the Bay of Biscay to run aground. The dashing Aubrey/Maturin naval
tales (among others, The Ionian Mission - see above) continue to
come out in intervals from England, where they are hugely and
deservedly popular. Published some years ago in the UK, they've
been arriving out of order, so readers find themselves sorting out
prequels from sequels. But shipping arrangements do no damage to
these polished, historically accurate, and intensely pleasurable
tales of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic era. Anglo-Iberian
physician and spy Stephen Maturin is again the linchpin, providing
the excuse for his dashing friend Aubrey to flee the mess he has
made of his British investments. Aboard H.M.S Ariel, Aubrey
transports Maturin to the Baltic, where the doctor will use his
linguistic skills and impeccable Catalan separatist credentials to
convince Spanish troops holding Baltic islands for Napoleon that
they should desert the Corsican monster and throw their lot in with
England. The Baltic mission is successful, but the subsequent
flight from Scandinavia runs into the rocks off the French coast.
The officers are taken prisoner and transported to Paris, where
they dine handsomely on meals cooked by a pretty widow as they
await execution. Splendid escape. Literate and amusing. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are ordered home by despatch vessel to bring the news of their latest victory to the government. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he has wrought in the French intelligence network in the New World, and the attentions of two privateers soon become menacing.
The chase that follows through the fogs and shallows of the Grand Banks is as thrilling, as tense and as unexpected in its culmination as anything Patrick O’Brian has written. Then, among other things, follows a shipwreck and a particularly sinister internment in the notorious Temple Prison in Paris. Once again, the tigerish and fascinating Diana Villiers redresses the balance in this man’s world of seamanship and war.
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