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Aubrey & Maturin #2
Post Captain
Post Captain, the second in Patrick O'Brian's much loved Aubrey-Maturin series of novels, begins with Jack Aubrey returning to an England at peace following the Treaty of Amiens. With his friend Stephen Maturin, he begins to live the life of a country gentleman but their comfortable existence is cut short when Jack is reduced to a pauper overnight. He flees to the continent to seek refuge only to find himself a hunted fugitive from Napoleon's regime. Aubrey's adventures in escaping from both France and the debtor's prison will grip the reader as fast as his unequalled actions at sea.
474 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
About the author
Patrick O'Brian
307 books2,261 followersPatrick O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey-Maturin series of historical novels has been described as "a masterpiece" (David Mamet, New York Times), "addictively readable" (Patrick T. Reardon, Chicago Tribune), and "the best historical novels ever written" (Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review), which "should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century" (George Will).
Set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, O'Brian's twenty-volume series centers on the enduring friendship between naval officer Jack Aubrey and physician (and spy) Stephen Maturin. The Far Side of the World, the tenth book in the series, was adapted into a 2003 film directed by Peter Weir and starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany. The film was nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture. The books are now available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book format.
In addition to the Aubrey-Maturin novels, Patrick O'Brian wrote several books including the novels Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, and The Unknown Shore, as well as biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso. He translated many works from French into English, among them the novels and memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir, the first volume of Jean Lacouture's biography of Charles de Gaulle, and famed fugitive Henri Cherriere's memoir Papillon. O'Brian died in January 2000.
The Aubrey-Maturin Series on Goodreads
Set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, O'Brian's twenty-volume series centers on the enduring friendship between naval officer Jack Aubrey and physician (and spy) Stephen Maturin. The Far Side of the World, the tenth book in the series, was adapted into a 2003 film directed by Peter Weir and starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany. The film was nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture. The books are now available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book format.
In addition to the Aubrey-Maturin novels, Patrick O'Brian wrote several books including the novels Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, and The Unknown Shore, as well as biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso. He translated many works from French into English, among them the novels and memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir, the first volume of Jean Lacouture's biography of Charles de Gaulle, and famed fugitive Henri Cherriere's memoir Papillon. O'Brian died in January 2000.
The Aubrey-Maturin Series on Goodreads
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,306 reviews
August 27, 2020
Post Captain makes me wonder if Patrick O'Brian originally intended Master and Commander as a one off (and if you know the answer please don't tell me. I like not knowing).
Master and Commander is a great book, and our introduction to Captain Jack Aubrey and Doctor Stephen Maturin is a great hook, but it can stand alone as a simple Naval adventure without any need for additional information about the men and women confined by its pages. This could, of course, simply be a result of its place as the first book in the series -- a series which stretches just over twenty books -- but there is little if any building for the future in Master and Commander, making it more in conception like O'Brian's The Catalans than his Aubrey-Maturin series.
But all of that "future building," all of that stuff needed to sustain a tale over twenty books, is present in Post Captain.
Many, though not all, of the characters that will become important to Jack and Stephen make their first appearance here: Mrs. Williams and her daughter, Sophia (Sophie ), their cousin Diana Villiers and Sir Joseph Blaine. The relationships with these people will continue to define Aubrey and Maturin until the end of their adventures, and it will define their friendship with one another. We see the return of such stalwarts as Preserved Killick, William Babbington, Heneage Dundas, Barret Bonden, Joe Plaice, and Thomas Pullings -- and their stories are lovingly broadened and deepened, as though O'Brian is now committed to them for a long voyage.
There is also the solidification of Aubrey's friendship with Maturin; they suffer the first and most dangerous test of their love for one another -- a test that brings them even closer to a fatal duel than their first meeting at the Governor's mansion in Port Mahon. We are introduced to Jack's ill luck with money, his penchant for saving drowning shipmates, his inveterate randiness, his father's big mouth (which causes no end of trouble for Jack) and his skill as a Captain and seaman; we are introduced to Stephen's work as an intelligence agent, his deadliness with a sword and pistol, his ideals, his hand in Jack's success, and his tendency to obsess over the unattainable. And all of these deliver plenty of foreshadowing of the challenges our heroes will face during their further adventures at sea and on land.
Moreover, O'Brian delivers his first statement that the remaining Aubrey-Maturin books will be more than they first appeared; they will also be testosterone driven Regency romances -- Boy's Own Austen, if you will.
Much has been made of O'Brian's debt to Jane Austen, and that debt is obvious in Post Captain. At least half of this book takes place on land. While not all of the Aubrey-Maturin novels spend so much time on land, the concerns of their private lives, whether through epistles or genuine time spent in England, will never lose their importance.
All of this suggests to me that Post Captain was the moment when O'Brian really knew this series was special. This was the moment it became his life's work. And it may very well be the best book in the series (although I've no doubt I'll say that again about another chapter).
How amazing must it have been to be O'Brian the day he wrote the last page of Post Captain, scribbling that toast to Sophia? I wish that had been me.
Master and Commander is a great book, and our introduction to Captain Jack Aubrey and Doctor Stephen Maturin is a great hook, but it can stand alone as a simple Naval adventure without any need for additional information about the men and women confined by its pages. This could, of course, simply be a result of its place as the first book in the series -- a series which stretches just over twenty books -- but there is little if any building for the future in Master and Commander, making it more in conception like O'Brian's The Catalans than his Aubrey-Maturin series.
But all of that "future building," all of that stuff needed to sustain a tale over twenty books, is present in Post Captain.
Many, though not all, of the characters that will become important to Jack and Stephen make their first appearance here: Mrs. Williams and her daughter, Sophia (Sophie ), their cousin Diana Villiers and Sir Joseph Blaine. The relationships with these people will continue to define Aubrey and Maturin until the end of their adventures, and it will define their friendship with one another. We see the return of such stalwarts as Preserved Killick, William Babbington, Heneage Dundas, Barret Bonden, Joe Plaice, and Thomas Pullings -- and their stories are lovingly broadened and deepened, as though O'Brian is now committed to them for a long voyage.
There is also the solidification of Aubrey's friendship with Maturin; they suffer the first and most dangerous test of their love for one another -- a test that brings them even closer to a fatal duel than their first meeting at the Governor's mansion in Port Mahon. We are introduced to Jack's ill luck with money, his penchant for saving drowning shipmates, his inveterate randiness, his father's big mouth (which causes no end of trouble for Jack) and his skill as a Captain and seaman; we are introduced to Stephen's work as an intelligence agent, his deadliness with a sword and pistol, his ideals, his hand in Jack's success, and his tendency to obsess over the unattainable. And all of these deliver plenty of foreshadowing of the challenges our heroes will face during their further adventures at sea and on land.
Moreover, O'Brian delivers his first statement that the remaining Aubrey-Maturin books will be more than they first appeared; they will also be testosterone driven Regency romances -- Boy's Own Austen, if you will.
Much has been made of O'Brian's debt to Jane Austen, and that debt is obvious in Post Captain. At least half of this book takes place on land. While not all of the Aubrey-Maturin novels spend so much time on land, the concerns of their private lives, whether through epistles or genuine time spent in England, will never lose their importance.
All of this suggests to me that Post Captain was the moment when O'Brian really knew this series was special. This was the moment it became his life's work. And it may very well be the best book in the series (although I've no doubt I'll say that again about another chapter).
How amazing must it have been to be O'Brian the day he wrote the last page of Post Captain, scribbling that toast to Sophia? I wish that had been me.
October 7, 2009
Patrick O'Brian, you have exposed yourself.
Exposed yourself as a Jane Austen wannabe, that is. One who is a bit sniffily about the fact that Jane (quite unfairly, I'm sure!) did not give us the thoughts of the male half of the regency romance equation.
The first 200 pages of this novel do really read like a historical romance. Albeit one with a very masculine touch- there's just as much swearing and angst and tinkering with the natural world in odd ways as ever there was before, but now its all in the presence of Ladies. The male half of the romance ncludes a number of entirely un-romantic things, most of which are questions of money and position, in much greater detail than one would get in a normal romance- things that a man very legitimately could not propose to a woman without. Also, Stephen's analysis of his own romantic torment is truly not to be missed- we get to see the Enlightenment trying to do a lab analysis of love. Wonderful. O'Brian also deals with the fact that these are men. Men who like sex. He's much more open about the slightly more adult sections of Polite Society who deal with this kind of thing. For example, Diana Villiers, the Whore of the Madonna/Whore pair that are the main females of this novel (there are others, but they're mostly easily dismissed cariactures), embodies a certain type of woman who took advantage of the strict proprieties to advance her own very slender chances of finding financial security and someone to look after her. As you can see, for all of his generally masculine world, he shows a surprising sensitivity to the delicacy of the feminine world as well. There's several very good depictions of the nuances of the social heirarchy in provincial England, and the various things that could immediately put one up or down that ladder- money and rank, of course, but also family associations, number of suitors, age, the material of one's dress, etc.
The most interesting status depiction, of course, is that of the service of the Navy as a whole. Jane herself dealt with the interesting mobility of a service of men who could rise instantly to the top and sink back down again within weeks (Persuasion)- this rapid status change was something new and unusual, something that rarely happened in the closed ranks of the Upper Ten Thousand. The book as a whole really focuses on a bunch of uncouth Navy men try to mend their ways to fit in on land, and the various levels of difficulty they find adjusting to the ways that people are judged and what matters here as opposed to Out There on the ocean waters, as well as the fact that even off land, you can never quite get away from all your problems there. Also, O'Brian brings up again and again throughout his books the fact that war really did change many people's lives for the better (if you're cool with probably losing a limb, at least, to get what you want). He doesn't let us forget that. Jack Aubrey is of course the most extreme example of this, but there are plenty of other ones brought up on every page of the book. Its one of the more interesting ins and outs of his work, and it is the forefront of the entire book.
... But never fear, O'Brian fans who are in it for the swashbuckling action and adventure! There's plenty of that to come as soon as our fellows get off land (come on, that's not really a spoiler). There's also some espionage, some fights, some excellently stupid bromantical angst between Jack and Stephen (they almost break up, oh noes!), and lots of running away from, beating up on, and dodging debt collectors (one of those scenes was my fav).
I think the quality of the book remained the same- the only reason I give it four stars instead of five is that I already know how good these books are, so I didn't get quite the same jolt of expectations surpassed x1000 that I did last time.
Exposed yourself as a Jane Austen wannabe, that is. One who is a bit sniffily about the fact that Jane (quite unfairly, I'm sure!) did not give us the thoughts of the male half of the regency romance equation.
The first 200 pages of this novel do really read like a historical romance. Albeit one with a very masculine touch- there's just as much swearing and angst and tinkering with the natural world in odd ways as ever there was before, but now its all in the presence of Ladies. The male half of the romance ncludes a number of entirely un-romantic things, most of which are questions of money and position, in much greater detail than one would get in a normal romance- things that a man very legitimately could not propose to a woman without. Also, Stephen's analysis of his own romantic torment is truly not to be missed- we get to see the Enlightenment trying to do a lab analysis of love. Wonderful. O'Brian also deals with the fact that these are men. Men who like sex. He's much more open about the slightly more adult sections of Polite Society who deal with this kind of thing. For example, Diana Villiers, the Whore of the Madonna/Whore pair that are the main females of this novel (there are others, but they're mostly easily dismissed cariactures), embodies a certain type of woman who took advantage of the strict proprieties to advance her own very slender chances of finding financial security and someone to look after her. As you can see, for all of his generally masculine world, he shows a surprising sensitivity to the delicacy of the feminine world as well. There's several very good depictions of the nuances of the social heirarchy in provincial England, and the various things that could immediately put one up or down that ladder- money and rank, of course, but also family associations, number of suitors, age, the material of one's dress, etc.
The most interesting status depiction, of course, is that of the service of the Navy as a whole. Jane herself dealt with the interesting mobility of a service of men who could rise instantly to the top and sink back down again within weeks (Persuasion)- this rapid status change was something new and unusual, something that rarely happened in the closed ranks of the Upper Ten Thousand. The book as a whole really focuses on a bunch of uncouth Navy men try to mend their ways to fit in on land, and the various levels of difficulty they find adjusting to the ways that people are judged and what matters here as opposed to Out There on the ocean waters, as well as the fact that even off land, you can never quite get away from all your problems there. Also, O'Brian brings up again and again throughout his books the fact that war really did change many people's lives for the better (if you're cool with probably losing a limb, at least, to get what you want). He doesn't let us forget that. Jack Aubrey is of course the most extreme example of this, but there are plenty of other ones brought up on every page of the book. Its one of the more interesting ins and outs of his work, and it is the forefront of the entire book.
... But never fear, O'Brian fans who are in it for the swashbuckling action and adventure! There's plenty of that to come as soon as our fellows get off land (come on, that's not really a spoiler). There's also some espionage, some fights, some excellently stupid bromantical angst between Jack and Stephen (they almost break up, oh noes!), and lots of running away from, beating up on, and dodging debt collectors (one of those scenes was my fav).
I think the quality of the book remained the same- the only reason I give it four stars instead of five is that I already know how good these books are, so I didn't get quite the same jolt of expectations surpassed x1000 that I did last time.
April 30, 2013
Dancing bears and loons that fancy themselves teapots? No, number two in the series is not a typical Aubrey/Maturin adventure, yet it is perhaps better than the first!
While book one, Master & Commander, was about war and friendship, the second book, Post Captain enters the love arena, and friendship is put to the test. Of course war is not forgotten, this is a historical fiction series set during the Napoleonic Wars after all. The career of our hero Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy intertwines with his unlikely friend's, an Irish/Catalan surgeon, natural philosopher and named Stephen Maturin. In this volume, containing one of the most ludicrous episodes in their adventures, the two must navigate the dangerous waters of the Peace of Amiens, which ceases hostilities for all of Europe...just not for Aubrey and Maturin.
If you survived book one's interminable explanations of naval terminology and are willing to give Patrick O'Brian a second chance, you'll be rewarded by the second book's smoother, more balanced plotting. The man's writing is worth your effort (and patience if you're not into the subject matter). He's been called the Jane Austen of his genre and that complimentary comparison is no more apparent than in Post Captain. With the Peace, Aubrey and Maturin find themselves back on land and prey to debt collectors and a predatory woman trying to find suitable
Woman do not play a huge role in the series, but a much larger one than might be assumed in books about naval warfare. Often they are in the background, off-stage if you will, influencing the actions of the principle characters, but when women do take the stage, they know their lines. O'Brian fleshes them out well, imbuing them with spines and brains, or a lack thereof when appropriate. They come alive and stand as well-rounded as the men.
If you've migrated to this series for its entertaining action, sea battles, technically correct descriptions of sailing, worry not! Some of the subject matter (even Aubrey's ship itself!) is a touch unorthodox, but there's still enough of what you came for and I doubt you'll be disappointed in continuing on with this very satisfying series.
My review of book one, Master and Commander:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
My review of book three, HMS Surprise:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
January 31, 2018
I've been reading the Aubrey/Maturin series for a few years now, and even though I'm not as loyal to these books as I am to other series, it's always nice to dip back into Patrick O'Brian's well-researched, well-written, and consistently delightful historical adventures.
Post Captain, the second in the series, is almost split evenly between scenes on land and scenes on various ships, and even though a lot of people prefer the ratio to skew more towards sea-based scenes, I liked the frequent changes of scenery. And it's always fun to see how Captain Aubrey functions on land opposed to how he functions at sea.
The story here gets off the ground when Aubrey learns to his dismay that he won't be paid for the capture of a foreign ship in the previous book, because it's been officially classified as a privateer and not a military ship. This information is revealed through this delightful exchange between Aubrey and his superior, where we see Patrick O'Brian proving once again that historically accurate dialogue isn't required to be stuffy and dry:
"'The Cacafuego was a thirty-two gun xebec-frigate, my Lord.'
'She was a privateer, sir.'
'Only by a damned lawyer's quibble,' said Jack, his voice rising.
'What the fucking hell is this language to me, sir? Do you know who you are talking to, sir? Do you know where you are?'"
Having already put himself into debt by spending money he thought would be paid, Aubrey spends a good amount of the book trying to do two things: stay one step ahead of his creditors, and get another assignment on a ship, as soon as possible. He's given the command of a ship that is, to put it mildly, a bit of a fixer-upper, and has to try to earn some money while balancing a difficult ship and a more difficult crew. And on top of that, Aubrey and Maturin get into some very Jane Austen-like shenanigans involving gossip, affairs, and marriage plots.
Basically my tagline for this book would be "If you thought Pride and Prejudice just needed more sea battles, Post Captain is for you!"
And now, in list form, some other delightful things that happen in this book:
-To stay out of debtors' prison, Aubrey has to escape England and go to Spain. Maturin's plan for smuggling Aubrey through the country involves disguising Aubrey as a dancing bear.
-Aubrey meets a Jewish man at a ball; a few paragraphs later, he murmurs "bar mitzvah" to himself in what I can only imagine as a tone of childlike wonder.
-Maturin has an affair with a sexy widow. Whenever they're alone, he calls her by her last name, and I can't fully explain why, but I was super into that.
-Aubrey rescues a sailor who falls overboard into shark-infested waters, and then he tells a story about how when he was younger he once dove off a ship and landed square on a shark's back.
-Maturin brings a hive of bees onto the ship and releases them into Aubrey's cabin so he can study their behavior, and then can't figure out how to get them back into their hive.
-Aubrey has a romance with a woman named Sophie (who I'm pretty sure he marries later in the series) and when he arranges for her to travel on his ship, goes into a full-out tizzy decorating the cabin in a way he that he thinks she'll like. This also requires Stephen to move his bees out of the cabin, which gives us this great conversation between Aubrey and Maturin while Aubrey is furiously decorating (seriously guys, I cannot say enough good things about O'Brian's dialogue):
"'We can shift the bulkhead a good eighteen inches for'ard,' said Jack. 'By the bye, you will not object to the bees going ashore, just for a while?'
'They did not go ashore for Mrs. Miller. There were none of these tyrannical caprices for Mrs. Miller, I believe. They are just growing used to their surroundings - they have started a queen-cell!'
'Brother, I insist. I should send my bees ashore for you, upon my sacred honour. Now there is a great favour I must ask you. I believe I have told you how I dined with Lord Nelson?'
'Not above two or three hundred times.'"
I love that so much. I swear, if I ever get married, the line "I should send my bees ashore for you" is going in my vows.
Post Captain, the second in the series, is almost split evenly between scenes on land and scenes on various ships, and even though a lot of people prefer the ratio to skew more towards sea-based scenes, I liked the frequent changes of scenery. And it's always fun to see how Captain Aubrey functions on land opposed to how he functions at sea.
The story here gets off the ground when Aubrey learns to his dismay that he won't be paid for the capture of a foreign ship in the previous book, because it's been officially classified as a privateer and not a military ship. This information is revealed through this delightful exchange between Aubrey and his superior, where we see Patrick O'Brian proving once again that historically accurate dialogue isn't required to be stuffy and dry:
"'The Cacafuego was a thirty-two gun xebec-frigate, my Lord.'
'She was a privateer, sir.'
'Only by a damned lawyer's quibble,' said Jack, his voice rising.
'What the fucking hell is this language to me, sir? Do you know who you are talking to, sir? Do you know where you are?'"
Having already put himself into debt by spending money he thought would be paid, Aubrey spends a good amount of the book trying to do two things: stay one step ahead of his creditors, and get another assignment on a ship, as soon as possible. He's given the command of a ship that is, to put it mildly, a bit of a fixer-upper, and has to try to earn some money while balancing a difficult ship and a more difficult crew. And on top of that, Aubrey and Maturin get into some very Jane Austen-like shenanigans involving gossip, affairs, and marriage plots.
Basically my tagline for this book would be "If you thought Pride and Prejudice just needed more sea battles, Post Captain is for you!"
And now, in list form, some other delightful things that happen in this book:
-To stay out of debtors' prison, Aubrey has to escape England and go to Spain. Maturin's plan for smuggling Aubrey through the country involves disguising Aubrey as a dancing bear.
-Aubrey meets a Jewish man at a ball; a few paragraphs later, he murmurs "bar mitzvah" to himself in what I can only imagine as a tone of childlike wonder.
-Maturin has an affair with a sexy widow. Whenever they're alone, he calls her by her last name, and I can't fully explain why, but I was super into that.
-Aubrey rescues a sailor who falls overboard into shark-infested waters, and then he tells a story about how when he was younger he once dove off a ship and landed square on a shark's back.
-Maturin brings a hive of bees onto the ship and releases them into Aubrey's cabin so he can study their behavior, and then can't figure out how to get them back into their hive.
-Aubrey has a romance with a woman named Sophie (who I'm pretty sure he marries later in the series) and when he arranges for her to travel on his ship, goes into a full-out tizzy decorating the cabin in a way he that he thinks she'll like. This also requires Stephen to move his bees out of the cabin, which gives us this great conversation between Aubrey and Maturin while Aubrey is furiously decorating (seriously guys, I cannot say enough good things about O'Brian's dialogue):
"'We can shift the bulkhead a good eighteen inches for'ard,' said Jack. 'By the bye, you will not object to the bees going ashore, just for a while?'
'They did not go ashore for Mrs. Miller. There were none of these tyrannical caprices for Mrs. Miller, I believe. They are just growing used to their surroundings - they have started a queen-cell!'
'Brother, I insist. I should send my bees ashore for you, upon my sacred honour. Now there is a great favour I must ask you. I believe I have told you how I dined with Lord Nelson?'
'Not above two or three hundred times.'"
I love that so much. I swear, if I ever get married, the line "I should send my bees ashore for you" is going in my vows.
October 31, 2018
My friend, Jose, regularly re-read the whole Aubrey-Maturin series. He found it so rich that diving back into it was a constant pleasure. This is not my first time through, and O'Brian's work holds my attention as firmly as it did initially.
In Post Captain, we find Aubrey in dire financial straits (nautical analogy works well) and we learn a lot more of Maturin's secrets (and secret life). O'Brian's writing is witty, precisely attuned to the issues at hand (and their correct terminology) and so historically accurate that you never doubt what is going on in this parallel universe. What joy!
2010
In Post Captain, we find Aubrey in dire financial straits (nautical analogy works well) and we learn a lot more of Maturin's secrets (and secret life). O'Brian's writing is witty, precisely attuned to the issues at hand (and their correct terminology) and so historically accurate that you never doubt what is going on in this parallel universe. What joy!
2010
July 16, 2013
Second books in a long epic series are usually a lot harder to write and to get right than debut ones. To use an analogy from music, a rock band usually writes a great debut album : they've been playing the material for years in garages and/or small pubs before being noticed, they have their enthusiasm stil running high and the ambition to get noticed. Second showings are often either trying to cash in on original success and are rushed with outtakes and rejects from the first album or are self-indulgent commercial offerings of stars who think they can do no wrong. I read a lot of series (historical and fantasy) and I noticed I like the beginnings, the start of the journey together, the getting to discover the world and the characters a lot more than the later developments. Post-Captain is an exception to this unwritten rule of mine, as I found it in many ways superior to the opening broadside. It's true that Master & Commander wasn't truly a debut for the author, he has written a couple of other books before engaging in this 20 book project, but I get the feeling he is still just warming up and that the best is yet to come. (I have also cheated a little and looked up at the synopsis of some of those later books: I can't wait to get out and explore some of the more exotic locations in the company of Aubrey and Maturin)
In the first book, Jack Aubrey meets Stephen Maturin and together they pillage and burn along the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Jack is only a sort of half-captain, an honorary title of master of a smallish ship that is not yet registered with full pay and seniority in the Admirality books. The title of the book refers to the goal of Jack Aubrey of putting his foot firmly on the ladder of advancement in the Navy and receiving his brevet for a full time captain, or 'post' in their specific jargon. The chronic lack of ships for the hundreds of breveted and unemployed actual captains, Jack's irrascible nature, his lack of respect for his superiors, and his illegitimate escapades with same superiors' wives conflate into putting him on shore (to pasture so to speak)
during a brief peace in the Napoleonic Wars. All these will soon become minor problems as Jack receives a double hit from his financial agent who runs away with all his prize money and from the justice system, who asks him to return same money as unlawfully claimed. So Jack is not only bankrupt, but hunted down by baillifs from the debtor prison. Sounds like a grim setup, but the book is actually a lot funnier than the previous one. This is partly coming from the romantic comedy angle that justifies all the references to Jane Austen I have seen in reviews, and partly from the hijinks the apparently dour and serious minded Stephen Maturin gets up to : disguising Jack in a bear costume for a dangerous escape from hostile France, dealing with a booze addicted
monkey on one of the ships they sail in, trying to raise bees in the captain's cabin, and much more.
I thought I would resent the time the couple of friends spent on land and away from the sea, but I was surprised at how well the author is chanelling the works of Jane Austen without becoming a pastiche or a parody. Jack and Stephen pay court to one of their neighbors, a dominating mother with a very good opinion of herself and with three unmarried daughters - the eldest Sophie being
bookish, musical, very bright and self-controlled. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Jack expresses his admiration and interest in Sophie, but their budding romance is cut short when the mother hears about his financial troubles. Much as I liked Sophie, it was her cousin Diana Villiers, a young widow returning from India without any wealth or connections, that captured my imagination, as well as that of Jack and Stephen Maturin. Uh-oh!! More than one friendship has been scuttled when a woman enters the scene, and in the case of Jack and Stephen it takes them to the edge of the the abbyss, as they come very close to a duel to the death. The fascinating thing about the way O'Brian handled this love triangle is that it made me empathise with each of the actors: Jack impetuosity and burning passion, Stephen's more quiet but probably a lot deeper and devastating emotional turmoil ( Can you create a unicorn by longing? ) and ultimately Diana's own lack of options as she is pushed by society and by her own ambition in the role of a kept woman for a wealthy industrialist. I really hope I will meet her again in the later novels.
I would not want to leave the impression that the novel is all about ballrooms and backroom politics. Far from it! Jack and Stephen are caught time and time again in open warfare on the high seas, either on a transport ship carrying them to England, on a new command on an experimental ship that sails like a bathtub, on a personal duel with a French privateer, on a raid against coastal
installations in Bretagne and finally an a piracy (oops, I meant privateer) attack on a convoy of Spanish galleons loaded with gold and silver from the South Americas. Sometimes the friends get separated, willingly or not, as Jack tries to get control of a rebellious crew and to deal with a violent second in command while Stephen is engaged in behind the lines espionage on the continent, showing he is as good with a sword and pistol as with a scalpel or a purgative.
Coming back to Aubrey and Maturin - they are surprisingly more captivating to watch as they reveal new aspects of their personalities and as they evolve over time than some of the actual battles that take place. The difference in their temperaments and areas of interest (fighting, drinking and women in the case of Jack; natural philosophy, politics and social studies in the case of Stephen) create a positive tension and pushes the plot forward, as well as offering a channel to introduce and debate larger issues of the early XIX century, like election reforms, bureaucracy in the Navy administration, arts and the condition of women, etc. The easiest analogy to make is one the author always intended to use, seeing the way he set up the meeting of the two friends in the first book: one plays the violin, one the cello. They make good music together, even when they are fighting and
singing in counterpoint and not in unison at the same melody. Another angle is offered in the book, looking at he way the two approach games of chance:
Piquet was their game. The cards flew fast, shuffled, cut, and dealt again: they had played together so long that each knew the other's style through and through. Jack's was a cunning alternation of risking everything for the triumphant point of eight, and of a steady, orthodox defence, fighting for every last trick. Stephen's was based upon Hoyle, Laplace, the theory of probabilities, and his knowledge of Jack's character.
I believe I would have picked Jack Aubrey as my favorite of the pair. back when I was 14 and dreamt of sailing my own ship and discovering uncharted islands at the edge of the maps of the world. Nowadays, I must confess I find myself attracted to the introspective and inquisitive Dr. Maturin as the more interesting and well rounded character. As Diana Villiers remarks at one time, Jack is an open book, wearing his heart out on a sleeve, while Stephen keeps his own counsel and waits and thinks things through.
I will close with a quote I borrowed (stole) from the wiki of the series, that I feel best describes the interest I have in continuing with the series. It's from critic Richard Snow:
"On every page Mr. O'Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don't, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives."
Read
December 20, 2023Patrick O’Brian’s worldbuilding conveys the impression that there are not only detailed landscape and dwellings to be glimpsed through the smallest window, but the roads lead somewhere just as detailed, whether the story leads us there or not.
O’Brian is a perfect example of what I call the bricolage method of worldbuilding, bricolage being (I think) a strong element of appeal for many genre readers.
O’Brian’s mastery of history is evident in the slight references that evoke, to the reader who knows that history, actions of far reaching consequence. A semi-comic conversation early on between the French commander Christy-Palliere and Penhoet contrasts with the terrible scene at Mahon at the beginning of the next book, underscoring what Christy-Palliere says about the various branches of Napoleon’s services not knowing what the others are doing, and frequently competing if not outright contradicting one another.
The reader who knows how Talleyrand tried to counterbalance Fouche, and how Napoleon used and discarded both if they did not serve his personal goals, is aware that there will be sinister payoff later. And indeed, O’Brian does not disappoint.
Then there is the science angle. Stephen Maturin, the spy, is also a physician-naturalist. O’Brian demonstrates his interests in these fields through Stephen’s secret diaries, and in the way he experiences the natural world in and around the human beings. Take for example the journey from Toulon to the Pyranees “folding and folding away to the west,” the sharp and sensory detail of flora and fauna—the hidden life thereof.
In this second book of the series, voice and character are nearly inextricable.
I’ve seen mainstream critics maintaining that Post Captain is O’Brian’s tribute to Jane Austen.
There is certainly a recognizable, and amusing, chunk of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mrs. Norris in Mrs. Williams, but Jane Austen probably would have been appalled at Diana, who shares a great deal with Mary Crawford, at least in superficials. But while Mary Crawford was content to rely on her charms and to look no farther than the world of London (even while acknowledging its falsity) Diana Villiers is far more complex.
Jane Austen preferred her country-gentry world to London, and even to Bath, if one can guess at her opinions by close reading of her work: women who were fortunate enough to be gentry born and possessed of a competence could lead comfortable, useful lives, even if they did not find a Mr. Darcy or a Captain Wentworth.
Did she read Mary Wollstonecroft’s passionate essays? I don’t know, but O'Brian must have. I see Diana in some of Wollstonecroft’s writing, and and in the diaries and letters of Claire Clairmont, both of whom insisted that women ought to be able to wander the world and experience the same things that men could, without the toxic fallout of lost respect. Harming themselves in their desperation, as well as those around them.
Sophie, while more conventional, is also agreeably complex, and I enjoy the books tremendously when all these women are on stage.
Though Jane Austen might not have liked Diana’s morals, I venture to think that she would’ve enjoyed a great deal of the humor. For example, the following passage:
“ . . . Killick, take good care of the Captain: his physic, well shaken, twice a day: the bolus thrice. He may offer to forget his bolus, Killick.’
‘He’ll take his nice bolus, sir, or my name’s not Preserved.’
‘Clap to the door. Give way, now; give way altogether. Step out! Lay aloft! Tally! And belay!’
They stood watching the dust of the post-chaise, and Bonden said, ‘Oh, I do wish as we’d worked the hearse-and-coffin lark, sir: if they was to nab him now, it would break my heart.’
‘How can you be so simple, Bonden? Do but think of a hearse and four cracking on regardless all the way up the Dover Road. It would be bound to excite comment. . .’
‘Well, sir. But, a hearse is sure: no bum ever arrested a corpse, as I know of.’
But—like Austen’s best work—not everything is comedy and satire. Like this observation of Stephen’s at an emotional cusp:
A foolish German had said that man thought in words. It was totally false; a pernicious doctrine; the thought flashed into being in a hundred simultaneous forms, with a thousand associations, and the speaking mind selected one, forming it grossly into the inadequate symbols of words, inadequate because common to disparate situations — admitted to be inadequate for vast regions of expression, since for them there were the parallel languages of music and painting. Words were not called for in many or indeed most forms of thought: Mozart certainly thought in terms of music. He [Stephen] himself at this moment was thinking in terms of scent.
I particularly relished the action sequence with the Lord Nelson and the Miss Lambs, characters I was sorry not to see more of. Stephen becomes more interesting in this book, his insights and abilities so far ranging, but he never becomes the Admirable Crichton, not when he jibes at Jack for his pathological cleanliness, insisting that if he blew on his used cup and sauce-pan they are quite clean enough. It’s their foibles, their humanity, and above all their relationship, that make Jack and Stephen so compelling.
Much as this book owes to Jane Austen, it is not a work with a tiny brush on two inches of ivory, as she said about her own work. Its brush is just as fine, but the canvas is as vast as the sea.
O’Brian is a perfect example of what I call the bricolage method of worldbuilding, bricolage being (I think) a strong element of appeal for many genre readers.
O’Brian’s mastery of history is evident in the slight references that evoke, to the reader who knows that history, actions of far reaching consequence. A semi-comic conversation early on between the French commander Christy-Palliere and Penhoet contrasts with the terrible scene at Mahon at the beginning of the next book, underscoring what Christy-Palliere says about the various branches of Napoleon’s services not knowing what the others are doing, and frequently competing if not outright contradicting one another.
The reader who knows how Talleyrand tried to counterbalance Fouche, and how Napoleon used and discarded both if they did not serve his personal goals, is aware that there will be sinister payoff later. And indeed, O’Brian does not disappoint.
Then there is the science angle. Stephen Maturin, the spy, is also a physician-naturalist. O’Brian demonstrates his interests in these fields through Stephen’s secret diaries, and in the way he experiences the natural world in and around the human beings. Take for example the journey from Toulon to the Pyranees “folding and folding away to the west,” the sharp and sensory detail of flora and fauna—the hidden life thereof.
In this second book of the series, voice and character are nearly inextricable.
I’ve seen mainstream critics maintaining that Post Captain is O’Brian’s tribute to Jane Austen.
There is certainly a recognizable, and amusing, chunk of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mrs. Norris in Mrs. Williams, but Jane Austen probably would have been appalled at Diana, who shares a great deal with Mary Crawford, at least in superficials. But while Mary Crawford was content to rely on her charms and to look no farther than the world of London (even while acknowledging its falsity) Diana Villiers is far more complex.
Jane Austen preferred her country-gentry world to London, and even to Bath, if one can guess at her opinions by close reading of her work: women who were fortunate enough to be gentry born and possessed of a competence could lead comfortable, useful lives, even if they did not find a Mr. Darcy or a Captain Wentworth.
Did she read Mary Wollstonecroft’s passionate essays? I don’t know, but O'Brian must have. I see Diana in some of Wollstonecroft’s writing, and and in the diaries and letters of Claire Clairmont, both of whom insisted that women ought to be able to wander the world and experience the same things that men could, without the toxic fallout of lost respect. Harming themselves in their desperation, as well as those around them.
Sophie, while more conventional, is also agreeably complex, and I enjoy the books tremendously when all these women are on stage.
Though Jane Austen might not have liked Diana’s morals, I venture to think that she would’ve enjoyed a great deal of the humor. For example, the following passage:
“ . . . Killick, take good care of the Captain: his physic, well shaken, twice a day: the bolus thrice. He may offer to forget his bolus, Killick.’
‘He’ll take his nice bolus, sir, or my name’s not Preserved.’
‘Clap to the door. Give way, now; give way altogether. Step out! Lay aloft! Tally! And belay!’
They stood watching the dust of the post-chaise, and Bonden said, ‘Oh, I do wish as we’d worked the hearse-and-coffin lark, sir: if they was to nab him now, it would break my heart.’
‘How can you be so simple, Bonden? Do but think of a hearse and four cracking on regardless all the way up the Dover Road. It would be bound to excite comment. . .’
‘Well, sir. But, a hearse is sure: no bum ever arrested a corpse, as I know of.’
But—like Austen’s best work—not everything is comedy and satire. Like this observation of Stephen’s at an emotional cusp:
A foolish German had said that man thought in words. It was totally false; a pernicious doctrine; the thought flashed into being in a hundred simultaneous forms, with a thousand associations, and the speaking mind selected one, forming it grossly into the inadequate symbols of words, inadequate because common to disparate situations — admitted to be inadequate for vast regions of expression, since for them there were the parallel languages of music and painting. Words were not called for in many or indeed most forms of thought: Mozart certainly thought in terms of music. He [Stephen] himself at this moment was thinking in terms of scent.
I particularly relished the action sequence with the Lord Nelson and the Miss Lambs, characters I was sorry not to see more of. Stephen becomes more interesting in this book, his insights and abilities so far ranging, but he never becomes the Admirable Crichton, not when he jibes at Jack for his pathological cleanliness, insisting that if he blew on his used cup and sauce-pan they are quite clean enough. It’s their foibles, their humanity, and above all their relationship, that make Jack and Stephen so compelling.
Much as this book owes to Jane Austen, it is not a work with a tiny brush on two inches of ivory, as she said about her own work. Its brush is just as fine, but the canvas is as vast as the sea.
January 8, 2019
Gustoso e page-turner, sebbene sia meno sostanzioso del primo, un po' più artificioso e decisamente più terricolo . Ma quando finalmente inizieranno le battaglie, si potrà dire che è valsa la pena dell'attesa.
Gli incroci di amori e amicizie con le ragazze Williams mi sono in parte sembrati una forzatura ma in fin dei conti servono da detonatore, sono un pretesto per esporre un qualcosa che mancava nel primo libro: le incrinature nell'amicizia tra i due protagonisti, con vicendevoli gelosie e incomprensioni. Anche nella storia più specifica di Maturin, , oltre ad essere un genere di forzatura di cui il primo libro era del tutto scevro, O'Brian sembra inaugurare una moda tutt'oggi molto in voga: quando si fa il secondo libro di una serie (o il secondo film, o la seconda serie di una fiction) basta prendere un personaggio e appiccicargli addosso un qualche mistero o missione segreta, un nuovo aspetto del personaggio che fino a quel momento - guarda un po'! - il narratore si era dimenticato di sviscerare. Il rischio è quello di creare l'effetto di un paio di baffi posticci. Nel caso specifico di questo libro, comunque, l'effetto "posticcio" non raggiunge il parossismo, il narratore è abile e sa fermarsi prima.
Rabbie, rancori, facce immusonite, piogge insistenti e assai più frequenti del sole, disdette di vario tipo sono gli ingredienti che motivano il titolo e che caratterizzano la trama. Se il primo movimento era un brillante preludio in tonalità maggiore, il secondo è certamente un adagio in tonalità minore. Per il terzo è dunque ragionevole aspettarsi un allegro con brio, .
Edit - dimenticavo di aggiungere una segnalazione "pratica" forse un po' scontata: mentre il primo libro può stare in piedi anche come romanzo a sé stante, con il secondo i vincoli dati della serialità assumono maggior rilievo.
Gli incroci di amori e amicizie con le ragazze Williams mi sono in parte sembrati una forzatura ma in fin dei conti servono da detonatore, sono un pretesto per esporre un qualcosa che mancava nel primo libro: le incrinature nell'amicizia tra i due protagonisti, con vicendevoli gelosie e incomprensioni. Anche nella storia più specifica di Maturin, , oltre ad essere un genere di forzatura di cui il primo libro era del tutto scevro, O'Brian sembra inaugurare una moda tutt'oggi molto in voga: quando si fa il secondo libro di una serie (o il secondo film, o la seconda serie di una fiction) basta prendere un personaggio e appiccicargli addosso un qualche mistero o missione segreta, un nuovo aspetto del personaggio che fino a quel momento - guarda un po'! - il narratore si era dimenticato di sviscerare. Il rischio è quello di creare l'effetto di un paio di baffi posticci. Nel caso specifico di questo libro, comunque, l'effetto "posticcio" non raggiunge il parossismo, il narratore è abile e sa fermarsi prima.
Rabbie, rancori, facce immusonite, piogge insistenti e assai più frequenti del sole, disdette di vario tipo sono gli ingredienti che motivano il titolo e che caratterizzano la trama. Se il primo movimento era un brillante preludio in tonalità maggiore, il secondo è certamente un adagio in tonalità minore. Per il terzo è dunque ragionevole aspettarsi un allegro con brio, .
Edit - dimenticavo di aggiungere una segnalazione "pratica" forse un po' scontata: mentre il primo libro può stare in piedi anche come romanzo a sé stante, con il secondo i vincoli dati della serialità assumono maggior rilievo.
July 22, 2016
"This is perhaps the final detachment; and this is perhaps the only way to live -- free, surprisingly light and well, no diminution of interest but no commitment: a liberty I have hardly ever known."
- Patrick O'Brian, 'Post Captain'
The second book in O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series (20 books). It might be early to say this, but this might rank at or near the top of the best historical novels ever (taken as a whole). I'm not sure if he can maintain this level of literary mastery, but if the first two books are any indication, I am impressed.
The thing that strikes me in this novel is how fantastic the relationship is between Captain Jack Aubrey and naval surgeon Stephen Maturin. It has to be one of the great duos in literary history. Ranking next to Holmes and Watson perhaps. This novel also seems to be a bit of a Victorian love note to Jane Austin with characters like Sophia Williams and the aptly named Diana Villiers. The novel contains so many gems that it is hard to review them adequately, especially since I finished this book a week ago.
However, I love the relationship between Aubrey and Maturin. It reminds me a bit of Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. I am pretty sure this Star Trek (1966–69) and Master and Commander/Post Captain (1969 - 1972) universes emerged independent of each other, but it is also amazing to see the similarities. It is as exciting to see this as it would be to discover Homo Sapiens developing independently in Africa and Asia. These things happen I guess, but the coincidence is still very lovely. What the relationship allows is the same events to be told through the perspective of the captain and his biases (Navy, order, etc) and the doctor (Science, rationality, etc.). The dialogue and back and forth is at times brilliance and worth the price of admission alone.
Since I will be reviewing another 18 of these I imagine over the next year or so, I will keep each of the reviews short and hopefully focused on another aspect of the novel and the series that comes up as I read them. I'm excited and intimidated by the prospect of reading them all.
- Patrick O'Brian, 'Post Captain'
The second book in O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series (20 books). It might be early to say this, but this might rank at or near the top of the best historical novels ever (taken as a whole). I'm not sure if he can maintain this level of literary mastery, but if the first two books are any indication, I am impressed.
The thing that strikes me in this novel is how fantastic the relationship is between Captain Jack Aubrey and naval surgeon Stephen Maturin. It has to be one of the great duos in literary history. Ranking next to Holmes and Watson perhaps. This novel also seems to be a bit of a Victorian love note to Jane Austin with characters like Sophia Williams and the aptly named Diana Villiers. The novel contains so many gems that it is hard to review them adequately, especially since I finished this book a week ago.
However, I love the relationship between Aubrey and Maturin. It reminds me a bit of Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. I am pretty sure this Star Trek (1966–69) and Master and Commander/Post Captain (1969 - 1972) universes emerged independent of each other, but it is also amazing to see the similarities. It is as exciting to see this as it would be to discover Homo Sapiens developing independently in Africa and Asia. These things happen I guess, but the coincidence is still very lovely. What the relationship allows is the same events to be told through the perspective of the captain and his biases (Navy, order, etc) and the doctor (Science, rationality, etc.). The dialogue and back and forth is at times brilliance and worth the price of admission alone.
Since I will be reviewing another 18 of these I imagine over the next year or so, I will keep each of the reviews short and hopefully focused on another aspect of the novel and the series that comes up as I read them. I'm excited and intimidated by the prospect of reading them all.
July 25, 2015
I almost gave this 3 stars, but I have too many reservations. I almost abandoned the book early on. I don't care for O'Brian's style - it's too Victorian. Sure, that's a plus for some, but I hate it & the story was very uneven. The first third of the book with threads running all the way through concentrated on ridiculous love interests & land problems. Very true to life, but Aubrey doesn't shine. It does make quite a statement about the economics of the war & the idiocy of societies, though.
On the plus side, Steven is a far more intriguing character now. He really grew in this book & I loved Diana, one of the love interests. Best of all, the book finally found its legs in the last half & ended very well, but it was long. Took far too long getting there.
I've never heard of a sailing ship that could go in either direction. No doubt it was tried, but it seemed more of a distraction than an addition to the story. And the bear costume! That was just awful & completely unbelievable. Some of my problem with the book is that I just read the Hornblower books which handled the same time period & issues far better.
I'll continue reading the series, at least one more book, but I'm not in a rush. As much as I love the characters, the writing wears on me & another book of such length & uneven quality will likely end it for me.
On the plus side, Steven is a far more intriguing character now. He really grew in this book & I loved Diana, one of the love interests. Best of all, the book finally found its legs in the last half & ended very well, but it was long. Took far too long getting there.
I've never heard of a sailing ship that could go in either direction. No doubt it was tried, but it seemed more of a distraction than an addition to the story. And the bear costume! That was just awful & completely unbelievable. Some of my problem with the book is that I just read the Hornblower books which handled the same time period & issues far better.
I'll continue reading the series, at least one more book, but I'm not in a rush. As much as I love the characters, the writing wears on me & another book of such length & uneven quality will likely end it for me.
December 9, 2017
4 Stars
Initially while reading this book and thinking about what I might say in my review, I didn’t think I would find anything positive to say. Now, having completed “the journey”, although there is far too much going on in this novel, and from what I can see here on GR, the longest volume of the series, it is quite a good book.
The first four chapters made me really uneasy. The land based captain Jack Aubrey was not as strong and so sure of himself as the Master and Commander we came to know from the first book. The love interests of Jack and Stephen were boring me to tears and so I nearly gave up on it right there. Then, suddenly, Napoleon sets an order to arrest all British in France, and Jack and Stephen are on the move, Jack in a bear suit. No I am not kidding. If I hadn’t already researched the fact that O’Brian is a stickler for historic facts, I might have thought that perhaps he was getting into the laudanum a bit too much.
Making up for the lack of action at the beginning, Jack is now back on the water, captured by the French and then re-captured by the English. His financier has dashed off with all of his money and he is living in fear of being arrested for being in debt. Patrick O’Brian is undoubtedly a master of historical fiction and particularly of naval history, but strangely (to me), his character building is also really strong. Jack is clearly not suited to the land. He is kind of pathetic, insecure, emotionally unstable. In stark contrast to this, on board a vessel, he is extremely courageous, inventive and clever. He will stop at nothing to win and I can’t remember a battle yet in either of the first two books, where he didn’t go charging in or creeping up sneakily to the challenge. Stephen Maturin on the other hand is very quick witted and a little bit on the crazy scientist side of things, really, the bees? What was he thinking? The relationship between these two was tested again and I can only assume that is why O’Brian introduces both Sophia and Dianna into the story, to help build some tension between these two chaps. But of course, comradery and mateship win the day and after a very strange potential dual, they are best of buddies again after Jack is injured whilst commandeering the corvette. I’m still trying to decide which of the two is funnier, Stephen this time around with his go at Jacks ability to write a letter “in the time that it would have taken to write half the Iliad and a commentary on it too” or something along those lines. Jack finds himself to be the epitome of hilarity with his “keeping Handle up in the air” on the pipe organ but I am sure that Stephen was thinking, ”I guess you had to be there mate” !!!
Initially while reading this book and thinking about what I might say in my review, I didn’t think I would find anything positive to say. Now, having completed “the journey”, although there is far too much going on in this novel, and from what I can see here on GR, the longest volume of the series, it is quite a good book.
The first four chapters made me really uneasy. The land based captain Jack Aubrey was not as strong and so sure of himself as the Master and Commander we came to know from the first book. The love interests of Jack and Stephen were boring me to tears and so I nearly gave up on it right there. Then, suddenly, Napoleon sets an order to arrest all British in France, and Jack and Stephen are on the move, Jack in a bear suit. No I am not kidding. If I hadn’t already researched the fact that O’Brian is a stickler for historic facts, I might have thought that perhaps he was getting into the laudanum a bit too much.
Making up for the lack of action at the beginning, Jack is now back on the water, captured by the French and then re-captured by the English. His financier has dashed off with all of his money and he is living in fear of being arrested for being in debt. Patrick O’Brian is undoubtedly a master of historical fiction and particularly of naval history, but strangely (to me), his character building is also really strong. Jack is clearly not suited to the land. He is kind of pathetic, insecure, emotionally unstable. In stark contrast to this, on board a vessel, he is extremely courageous, inventive and clever. He will stop at nothing to win and I can’t remember a battle yet in either of the first two books, where he didn’t go charging in or creeping up sneakily to the challenge. Stephen Maturin on the other hand is very quick witted and a little bit on the crazy scientist side of things, really, the bees? What was he thinking? The relationship between these two was tested again and I can only assume that is why O’Brian introduces both Sophia and Dianna into the story, to help build some tension between these two chaps. But of course, comradery and mateship win the day and after a very strange potential dual, they are best of buddies again after Jack is injured whilst commandeering the corvette. I’m still trying to decide which of the two is funnier, Stephen this time around with his go at Jacks ability to write a letter “in the time that it would have taken to write half the Iliad and a commentary on it too” or something along those lines. Jack finds himself to be the epitome of hilarity with his “keeping Handle up in the air” on the pipe organ but I am sure that Stephen was thinking, ”I guess you had to be there mate” !!!
February 21, 2017
No, ma veramente mancano SOLO altri 18 libri e poi questa serie FINISCE?? E poi io che faccio???
October 7, 2019
Is it a sign of maturity that I appear to be enjoying the Aubrey-Maturin books much more than I used to? Maybe I just had to wait until I had reached an age that gave me the perspective I needed to appreciate them more fully? Perhaps my jargon-detector is a little more lenient this time around? Or maybe my book-reading bio-rhythms were just in synch and I got lucky? Regardless of what may be the cause I found myself really enjoying this volume of the Aubrey-Maturin series, a fact that surpised me greatly.
I have previously noted that while I appreciate the famous series by O'Brian, it did not appear likely that I would become a rabid fan of them. Indeed, I found myself only just able to slog through the first one and its interminable naval-terminology. By all acounts, however, volume one is not exactly the best in the series (even by the admission of die-hard Aubrey-Maturin devotees) and so I decided to try volume three, which, while definitely better in my estimation, didn’t exactly ring my bell. Why did I skip ahead to volume three at that time, you may logically ask? Well, I had heard that the second volume was very much O’Brian in a Jane Austen emulation mode, and while I certainly have nothing against that elder stateswoman of letters I wasn’t quite sure that a story at least partially about “Aubrey and Maturin on land worrying about their love lives” was going to improve matters. I appear to have been wrong. Very wrong indeed.
The fact of the matter is that I thoroughly enjoyed _Post Captain_, and in some ways the ‘love lives’ parts may have been the best bits. Perhaps it was because of the obvious tension in the friendship between Aubrey and Maturin that was intoduced by this very story element that added to its appeal. There definitely appears to be more to their relationship than the mutual admiration society that I feared might be the case (no doubt erroneously) and it was interesting to see some of the relevant weaknesses of the characters come to the fore: Aubrey’s bluff straighforwardness that can sometimes overlay a real selfishness and opacity, and Maturin’s sometimes self-pitying lack of confidence and tendency to let himself become a martyr. Their love inerests were also, um, well interesting. Diana Villiers, the spitfire young widow champing at the bit of genteel expectations was definitely an intriguing character. The fact that not only Maturin (her obvious ‘love-interest’ as far as the series is concerned), but also Aubrey, fall for her feminine wiles - much to the chagrin and bewilderment of them both - was just an added bonus. Sophie Williams, the much more staid and proper young lady, was also interesting more or less despite herself. She is just as discontent being under the thumb of her mother’s (and society’s) expectations, but she is much more willing to accept that they are simply the way things must be than is her iconoclastic cousin Diana. She thus does often fall into the mould of the beautiful, pining maiden who appears to lack any individual motivation or uniqely defining characteristics aside from beauty, good manners, and a fine cross-stitch, but when push comes to shove (and they admittedly need to be pretty hard shoves) she shows herself to have some gumption after all, as well as an underlying honesty and sweetness (not to mention perceptiveness) that puts her in a favourable contrast to her selfish and often downright cruel cousin. Sophie’s mother (and Diana’s de facto ‘guardian’) rounds out the cast of characters in the romance, playing the part of the conniving and bitchy mother of the maidens to the hilt. Really little more than a mercenary looking for the main chance when it comes to marrying off her charges, she cloaks herself in the genteel airs of polite society and propriety when it is obvious she is at heart little more than a mean-spirited, grasping woman.
So much for the romance plot, what about the rest of the book? Well, it’s not surprising that we have the usual melange of sailing on the high seas (with its concomitant doses of naval jargon) peppered with scenes of combat and Aubrey’s need to navigate (heh) the challenges incumbent upon dealing with two very different scenarios: first being saddled with an unweildy ship and a familiar crew, then a fine ship and a crew with whom he has no experience; some (non-romantic) intrigue as we follow Dr. Maturin in the byways of his ‘real’ job with Naval Intelligence; and something of a primer on debt and its attendant hazards in the 18th and 19th centuries as poor Jack finds himself destitute (as usual) when he is screwed over by the Naval Board over the matter of prizes (as usual) and he attempts to avoid dry land as much as possible in order to escape a debtor’s prison. All in all it was highly enjoyable, certainly my favourite time spent with Aubrey and Maturin so far.
I have previously noted that while I appreciate the famous series by O'Brian, it did not appear likely that I would become a rabid fan of them. Indeed, I found myself only just able to slog through the first one and its interminable naval-terminology. By all acounts, however, volume one is not exactly the best in the series (even by the admission of die-hard Aubrey-Maturin devotees) and so I decided to try volume three, which, while definitely better in my estimation, didn’t exactly ring my bell. Why did I skip ahead to volume three at that time, you may logically ask? Well, I had heard that the second volume was very much O’Brian in a Jane Austen emulation mode, and while I certainly have nothing against that elder stateswoman of letters I wasn’t quite sure that a story at least partially about “Aubrey and Maturin on land worrying about their love lives” was going to improve matters. I appear to have been wrong. Very wrong indeed.
The fact of the matter is that I thoroughly enjoyed _Post Captain_, and in some ways the ‘love lives’ parts may have been the best bits. Perhaps it was because of the obvious tension in the friendship between Aubrey and Maturin that was intoduced by this very story element that added to its appeal. There definitely appears to be more to their relationship than the mutual admiration society that I feared might be the case (no doubt erroneously) and it was interesting to see some of the relevant weaknesses of the characters come to the fore: Aubrey’s bluff straighforwardness that can sometimes overlay a real selfishness and opacity, and Maturin’s sometimes self-pitying lack of confidence and tendency to let himself become a martyr. Their love inerests were also, um, well interesting. Diana Villiers, the spitfire young widow champing at the bit of genteel expectations was definitely an intriguing character. The fact that not only Maturin (her obvious ‘love-interest’ as far as the series is concerned), but also Aubrey, fall for her feminine wiles - much to the chagrin and bewilderment of them both - was just an added bonus. Sophie Williams, the much more staid and proper young lady, was also interesting more or less despite herself. She is just as discontent being under the thumb of her mother’s (and society’s) expectations, but she is much more willing to accept that they are simply the way things must be than is her iconoclastic cousin Diana. She thus does often fall into the mould of the beautiful, pining maiden who appears to lack any individual motivation or uniqely defining characteristics aside from beauty, good manners, and a fine cross-stitch, but when push comes to shove (and they admittedly need to be pretty hard shoves) she shows herself to have some gumption after all, as well as an underlying honesty and sweetness (not to mention perceptiveness) that puts her in a favourable contrast to her selfish and often downright cruel cousin. Sophie’s mother (and Diana’s de facto ‘guardian’) rounds out the cast of characters in the romance, playing the part of the conniving and bitchy mother of the maidens to the hilt. Really little more than a mercenary looking for the main chance when it comes to marrying off her charges, she cloaks herself in the genteel airs of polite society and propriety when it is obvious she is at heart little more than a mean-spirited, grasping woman.
So much for the romance plot, what about the rest of the book? Well, it’s not surprising that we have the usual melange of sailing on the high seas (with its concomitant doses of naval jargon) peppered with scenes of combat and Aubrey’s need to navigate (heh) the challenges incumbent upon dealing with two very different scenarios: first being saddled with an unweildy ship and a familiar crew, then a fine ship and a crew with whom he has no experience; some (non-romantic) intrigue as we follow Dr. Maturin in the byways of his ‘real’ job with Naval Intelligence; and something of a primer on debt and its attendant hazards in the 18th and 19th centuries as poor Jack finds himself destitute (as usual) when he is screwed over by the Naval Board over the matter of prizes (as usual) and he attempts to avoid dry land as much as possible in order to escape a debtor’s prison. All in all it was highly enjoyable, certainly my favourite time spent with Aubrey and Maturin so far.
December 16, 2021
Read this book in 2007, and its the 2nd volume of the amazing "Aubrey and Maturin" series.
This tale starts off in AD 1803, and we find Captain Aubrey, RN, in France hiding from his creditors in England, and while in France he's interned.
While escaping from debtor's prison in France and from a possible mutiny he will join Maturin, who himself had to escape from certain personal struggles.
Together and their crew of able seamen, they will hunt down their quarry right into the mouth of a French-held harbour, and all after Napoleon has smashed the peace of Amiens, and thus returned to full war.
What is to follow is an adventurous and thrilling seafaring story, in which Aubrey and Maturin are getting into various problems of their own and as well as warlike problems, and each will dealt with in their own determined way, and this is brought to us in a most wonderful and authentic fashion by the author.
Highly recommended, for this is a superb addition to this brilliant series, and that's why I like to call this episode: "A Compelling Aubrey & Maturin Sequel"!
This tale starts off in AD 1803, and we find Captain Aubrey, RN, in France hiding from his creditors in England, and while in France he's interned.
While escaping from debtor's prison in France and from a possible mutiny he will join Maturin, who himself had to escape from certain personal struggles.
Together and their crew of able seamen, they will hunt down their quarry right into the mouth of a French-held harbour, and all after Napoleon has smashed the peace of Amiens, and thus returned to full war.
What is to follow is an adventurous and thrilling seafaring story, in which Aubrey and Maturin are getting into various problems of their own and as well as warlike problems, and each will dealt with in their own determined way, and this is brought to us in a most wonderful and authentic fashion by the author.
Highly recommended, for this is a superb addition to this brilliant series, and that's why I like to call this episode: "A Compelling Aubrey & Maturin Sequel"!
January 30, 2020
The second installment of the Aubrey-Maturin chronicles is long, and has the unpredictable, organic rhythm one comes to expect of the books: the small and large concerns chasing each other, defeat crowding upon victory, action on small, daily joys.
This volume brings us deeper into the landed life of the two protagonists, and explores new highs and lows in their friendship. It also brings us new ships to love and hate, blazing action, and the difference between the wizened heads of male and female gibbons.
This volume brings us deeper into the landed life of the two protagonists, and explores new highs and lows in their friendship. It also brings us new ships to love and hate, blazing action, and the difference between the wizened heads of male and female gibbons.
July 28, 2024
These books put you on the deck of a wooden Man-of-War during the early 19th century in the Age of Sail.
You're in the rigging. You're running out the great guns. Beating to windward, teaching your body the rhythms of the vast oceans of our planet. This is a particular time and place described with humor and delight. Aubrey and Maturin represent the body and the mind, as well as life truly lived.
You're in the rigging. You're running out the great guns. Beating to windward, teaching your body the rhythms of the vast oceans of our planet. This is a particular time and place described with humor and delight. Aubrey and Maturin represent the body and the mind, as well as life truly lived.
December 12, 2016
I started with this book, rather than Master and Commander, on a friend's recommendation, and I had more fun than I've had with a book in a long while. O'Brian has a strong, witty technique—and his command of omniscient point of view makes it feel as natural as breathing. This is a book about a single, particular friendship, and on that ground it succeeds enormously.
June 15, 2010
Among John Fowles’ many goals in The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) was his intention to pay homage to Jane Austen’s Persuasion. But Post Captain, published just three years after Fowles’s book, is a far happier tribute to Jane, enriching my enjoyment of Austen, while succeeding on many other accounts as well. While Fowles rambles all over Lyme and Bath trying both to epitomize and to outdo the entire body of Victorian literature, O’Brian, as always, entertains and educates with matchless grace and wit. Austen’s impact upon O’Brian’s thought and style is unmistakable, not least in his ability to embed within the action of the novel a nuanced philosophy of love and marriage in His Majesty’s Royal Navy. It would be easy, and tempting, to ignore the moral plumbing of the book, but that would be fatal to a true appreciation of what O’Brian has achieved.
Obviously the Aubrey/Maturin books are much more than an echo of the old English gentry, as are Austen’s books. You will find in Post Captain all the action and espionage of Ian Fleming, all of the good clean fun of the Holmes-Watson friendship in Jack and Stephen, and enough inroads into 19th-century English culture to occupy a lifetime of derivative reading. But the main point of Post Captain is the time that our heroes spend ashore, and particularly in the establishment of the love between Jack and his eventual wife Sophie.
The action moves rapidly between land and sea and, as the telltale compression of pages draws us home, the reader suffers the same bittersweet emotions that will wash over one toward the end of a Jane Austen story. In spite of the absorbing philosophical dialogue in her books, in spite of the fun portraits of social climbing, in spite even of the inevitable tragic illnesses that Austen would use to distract us briefly from the main love story, the question of the heroine’s romantic fate is always uppermost in Austen’s books. Now it is a very sensitive and subtle male novelist who is able to emulate this particular magic of Austen’s. Her assault upon what was then passing as virtue and romance is motivated perfectly by her wish to elevate the reader’s view of both. It is difficult to choose what in Austen is more pleasant: her expertise in puncturing hypocrites or her irresistible celebration of well-earned matrimonial felicity.
Post Captain is shot through with these same qualities. Dialogue is perhaps our best guide in appreciating how Austen has influenced this part of the Aubriad. In chapter ten, we find Stephen Maturin talking with Captain Jack Aubrey’s would-be fiancée Sophie Williams in her home. As they discuss how best to settle a social misunderstanding between Jack and Sophie which is preventing their relationship from proceeding (a perfectly typical piece of Austen fastidiousness), Stephen is attempting to persuade Sophie to throw all aristocratic caution to the wind and to tell Jack in no uncertain terms that she does love him. See if you don’t agree that O’Brian is a worthy successor to Austen in the distressing fight to preserve chivalry.
“There is much to be said for directness.”
“Oh, yes, yes! There is. Everything would be so much simpler if only one said what one thought, or felt. Tell me,” she said shyly, after a pause, “may I say something to you, perhaps quite improper and wrong?”
“I should take it very friendly in you my dear.”
This exchange is an appropriate bow to the 20th-century reader who, generally impatient with the conventions of propriety governing relations between the sexes in Austen’s time, wonders while reading her books (or actually, while watching Austen movies) when in the world the heroine is going to attempt her own seduction of the Darcy figure, or at least propose marriage herself. With such pagans, O’Brian is not entirely unsympathetic. As usual, he has written a novel that is packed to the top with naval action, and he can thrill anyone with his descriptions of battle. But it is in conversations like the one quoted above in which he reveals what he is really all about. Like his idol Jane, O’Brian hankers for an older age when friendship was a work of art shaped by a plethora of considerations, including loyalty, emotional affinity, appeals to reason, and even (Gasp!) a mutual acknowledgement of a transcendent moral structure. That is why it is even intelligible for Stephen to declare, “There is much to be said for directness.” Funnily enough, this is a slogan that will appeal to many in the year 2010 who would never bother to read O’Brian, let alone read Austen. When such people praise directness, what they are actually endorsing is something like a desire to cut to the chase. It is only Sophie’s perfect rejoinder to Stephen’s advice which reminds us that this novel is set in 1803: “Everything would be so much simpler if only one said what one thought, or felt.” Here, Sophie is not referring to the foolish simplicity of internet forums, where everyone is encouraged to blather incoherently regardless of anything. Here thought and feeling are values as important as life and love, and the directness Sophie longs for is assumed to be desirable only among those who have undertaken to fasten their thoughts and feelings to eternal realities.
Obviously the Aubrey/Maturin books are much more than an echo of the old English gentry, as are Austen’s books. You will find in Post Captain all the action and espionage of Ian Fleming, all of the good clean fun of the Holmes-Watson friendship in Jack and Stephen, and enough inroads into 19th-century English culture to occupy a lifetime of derivative reading. But the main point of Post Captain is the time that our heroes spend ashore, and particularly in the establishment of the love between Jack and his eventual wife Sophie.
The action moves rapidly between land and sea and, as the telltale compression of pages draws us home, the reader suffers the same bittersweet emotions that will wash over one toward the end of a Jane Austen story. In spite of the absorbing philosophical dialogue in her books, in spite of the fun portraits of social climbing, in spite even of the inevitable tragic illnesses that Austen would use to distract us briefly from the main love story, the question of the heroine’s romantic fate is always uppermost in Austen’s books. Now it is a very sensitive and subtle male novelist who is able to emulate this particular magic of Austen’s. Her assault upon what was then passing as virtue and romance is motivated perfectly by her wish to elevate the reader’s view of both. It is difficult to choose what in Austen is more pleasant: her expertise in puncturing hypocrites or her irresistible celebration of well-earned matrimonial felicity.
Post Captain is shot through with these same qualities. Dialogue is perhaps our best guide in appreciating how Austen has influenced this part of the Aubriad. In chapter ten, we find Stephen Maturin talking with Captain Jack Aubrey’s would-be fiancée Sophie Williams in her home. As they discuss how best to settle a social misunderstanding between Jack and Sophie which is preventing their relationship from proceeding (a perfectly typical piece of Austen fastidiousness), Stephen is attempting to persuade Sophie to throw all aristocratic caution to the wind and to tell Jack in no uncertain terms that she does love him. See if you don’t agree that O’Brian is a worthy successor to Austen in the distressing fight to preserve chivalry.
“There is much to be said for directness.”
“Oh, yes, yes! There is. Everything would be so much simpler if only one said what one thought, or felt. Tell me,” she said shyly, after a pause, “may I say something to you, perhaps quite improper and wrong?”
“I should take it very friendly in you my dear.”
This exchange is an appropriate bow to the 20th-century reader who, generally impatient with the conventions of propriety governing relations between the sexes in Austen’s time, wonders while reading her books (or actually, while watching Austen movies) when in the world the heroine is going to attempt her own seduction of the Darcy figure, or at least propose marriage herself. With such pagans, O’Brian is not entirely unsympathetic. As usual, he has written a novel that is packed to the top with naval action, and he can thrill anyone with his descriptions of battle. But it is in conversations like the one quoted above in which he reveals what he is really all about. Like his idol Jane, O’Brian hankers for an older age when friendship was a work of art shaped by a plethora of considerations, including loyalty, emotional affinity, appeals to reason, and even (Gasp!) a mutual acknowledgement of a transcendent moral structure. That is why it is even intelligible for Stephen to declare, “There is much to be said for directness.” Funnily enough, this is a slogan that will appeal to many in the year 2010 who would never bother to read O’Brian, let alone read Austen. When such people praise directness, what they are actually endorsing is something like a desire to cut to the chase. It is only Sophie’s perfect rejoinder to Stephen’s advice which reminds us that this novel is set in 1803: “Everything would be so much simpler if only one said what one thought, or felt.” Here, Sophie is not referring to the foolish simplicity of internet forums, where everyone is encouraged to blather incoherently regardless of anything. Here thought and feeling are values as important as life and love, and the directness Sophie longs for is assumed to be desirable only among those who have undertaken to fasten their thoughts and feelings to eternal realities.
September 18, 2017
This is a lot of fun, literary historical fiction with a dose of action. I read the first book a few years back and enjoyed it, though I struggled with the morass of seafaring terms. Either this book reduces them or I’d just gotten used to not understanding every word. This book broadens the world of the series, giving the heroes some time onshore to get into trouble and romantic entanglements (these sections are surprisingly reminiscent of Jane Austen, who was writing around the time these novels are set, which lends credibility to the text). There is perhaps less action here than in the first book, but the stakes are higher and more of the secondary characters are fleshed out. Aubrey and Maturin are both still complex, believable, flawed characters with a complicated friendship. The writing is good, there are moments of humor, and the setting is brought so thoroughly to life that a reader might be fooled into believing O’Brian was writing about his own time period. I think I must have liked this book better than the first, because I’m ready to read the third book sooner rather than later.
November 17, 2017
Bello come sanno esserlo i libri di avventura. Quel genere che si ama da ragazzi e non si smette più di amare.
Peccato che O’Brien tifi spudoratamente per Stephen e lascia a Jack la parte del sempliciotto genio solo nell’arte di navigare e guerreggiare (tipo idiot savant).
Peccato che O’Brien tifi spudoratamente per Stephen e lascia a Jack la parte del sempliciotto genio solo nell’arte di navigare e guerreggiare (tipo idiot savant).
September 3, 2021
I'm tempted to award five stars to the second book in O'Brian's legendary historical novel series about the English captain Jack Aubrey, because so much of what it does, it does so well. Any admirer of O'Brian is sure to think first of the incredible texture of the language, which is one of the great pleasures of a well-written historical novel, and the reader left to marvel at his prodigious, seemingly-endless knowledge of early-nineteenth-century jargon. One also admires the extraordinarily creative way he handles events, such that you genuinely never know with each tense encounter if Jack's ship will be victorious, or lose its quarry, or be taken itself. Fortune's wheel spins on and on, sometimes up, and sometimes down.
But I must admit I found certain deficiencies in this volume that I didn't detect in Master and Commander. First, Aubrey spends a good deal of time on shore and has some adventures of a domestic and romantic nature, and in truth, I largely found it wearisome stuff - sort of second-rate Jane Austen homage.
The second and more serious problem is that O'Brian employs a device several times where principle action occurs "off stage", and is often entirely undescribed, leaving the reader to extrapolate key conflicts or the resolutions of key conflicts. I was strongly put off by this technique, and at times it was confusing and quite aggravating. There is a shift in relationships between the principle characters early on that is cryptically alluded to in Maturin's diary, and it is only tens of pages later we learn what the hell he was talking about when Aubrey reflects back on events that happened months ago in a later scene, and truly some of the most important action in the entire novel is neither described nor alluded to at all, we are simply left to deduce that something must have happened, because a deep conflict has suddenly vanished.
I find in general I do not like dramatic tension or literary effects that are created by the arbitrary withholding of information the reader has every right to expect. Typically if I'm not reading something of the caliber of Joyce or Beckett, I want the author to actually tell us what is going on.
Despite these liabilities, this book is a great delight, beautifully-written for the most part, and a pleasure to read.
But I must admit I found certain deficiencies in this volume that I didn't detect in Master and Commander. First, Aubrey spends a good deal of time on shore and has some adventures of a domestic and romantic nature, and in truth, I largely found it wearisome stuff - sort of second-rate Jane Austen homage.
The second and more serious problem is that O'Brian employs a device several times where principle action occurs "off stage", and is often entirely undescribed, leaving the reader to extrapolate key conflicts or the resolutions of key conflicts. I was strongly put off by this technique, and at times it was confusing and quite aggravating. There is a shift in relationships between the principle characters early on that is cryptically alluded to in Maturin's diary, and it is only tens of pages later we learn what the hell he was talking about when Aubrey reflects back on events that happened months ago in a later scene, and truly some of the most important action in the entire novel is neither described nor alluded to at all, we are simply left to deduce that something must have happened, because a deep conflict has suddenly vanished.
I find in general I do not like dramatic tension or literary effects that are created by the arbitrary withholding of information the reader has every right to expect. Typically if I'm not reading something of the caliber of Joyce or Beckett, I want the author to actually tell us what is going on.
Despite these liabilities, this book is a great delight, beautifully-written for the most part, and a pleasure to read.
January 24, 2020
It's been... wow, a decade? Since I read Master and Commander.
So, yes, I can say that you don't need any detailed knowledge of the first book before reading this. In fact, while the climax of the first book gets brought up a lot, the only impact on this book is that these events happened. There's no direct consequences.
This one wanders around a bit, establishing a slightly larger cast of characters, and looking deeper into the principle two, especially Maturin, who gets firmly established a spy and believer in Catalonian independence.
It starts with a promise of naval action (without Aubrey involved) that gets cut short. From there, we get a bit upper-class romance, which is undercut a bit by O'Brian's habit of minimal presentation. There's not a lot of descriptions given, and a lot of things are condensed down, with a paragraph starting with one conversation, and then flowing directly into a different one. It takes a bit of an attentive eye to follow the extremely stream-of-consciousness transitions, but there are enough hints to follow.
A good chunk of the beginning gets taken up the start of a knot of romance, and money problems that hang over the rest of the book. Of course, this is still a age of sail adventure series, so that can't last, and Aubrey ends up with a ship that looks to be the inspiration for HMS Fearless in On Basilisk Station. Though in this case, its acknowledged as a failure before ever being put to sea.
From there, there's usual fitting out, and poor crew dramas of these types of books (and as well done as ever), culminating with the main action scene, and then a secondary action as a denouement, and way to confirm Aubrey's fortunes are rising. Overall, it's well written, and obviously setting things up for the long haul of a longer series of books (I'll have to get to book three is less than a decade...), but that does cause the plot to make almost as much leeway as the Polychrest (um... read the book to get that one).
So, yes, I can say that you don't need any detailed knowledge of the first book before reading this. In fact, while the climax of the first book gets brought up a lot, the only impact on this book is that these events happened. There's no direct consequences.
This one wanders around a bit, establishing a slightly larger cast of characters, and looking deeper into the principle two, especially Maturin, who gets firmly established a spy and believer in Catalonian independence.
It starts with a promise of naval action (without Aubrey involved) that gets cut short. From there, we get a bit upper-class romance, which is undercut a bit by O'Brian's habit of minimal presentation. There's not a lot of descriptions given, and a lot of things are condensed down, with a paragraph starting with one conversation, and then flowing directly into a different one. It takes a bit of an attentive eye to follow the extremely stream-of-consciousness transitions, but there are enough hints to follow.
A good chunk of the beginning gets taken up the start of a knot of romance, and money problems that hang over the rest of the book. Of course, this is still a age of sail adventure series, so that can't last, and Aubrey ends up with a ship that looks to be the inspiration for HMS Fearless in On Basilisk Station. Though in this case, its acknowledged as a failure before ever being put to sea.
From there, there's usual fitting out, and poor crew dramas of these types of books (and as well done as ever), culminating with the main action scene, and then a secondary action as a denouement, and way to confirm Aubrey's fortunes are rising. Overall, it's well written, and obviously setting things up for the long haul of a longer series of books (I'll have to get to book three is less than a decade...), but that does cause the plot to make almost as much leeway as the Polychrest (um... read the book to get that one).
June 8, 2022
Post Captain is the second book in the twenty-part Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. Interestingly, it is the longest of all twenty books. Certainly, the limited scope of the first book is broadened to include a wider range of settings and a larger cast of characters. Most notably the two main protagonists, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, spend just as much time on land as they do at sea which introduces new elements to the book. This development bodes well for the next books, as it seems there will be plenty of variation in themes and setting to prevent them from feeling repetitive.
These books are driven by the characters, and one of the key developments in this book is the role that Dr. Maturin plays in the story. In the first book, he was very much a passive character, always observing the main conflicts but not taking part in them. That is not the case in Post Captain, where we see his emergence as an equal to Jack, as someone with his own agenda which comes into conflict with Jack’s. Indeed, the main theme of this book is how Jack and Stephen’s friendship gets tested to the breaking point and how they overcome that conflict.
One stylistic aspect of this book that is worth mentioning in a review is O’Brian’s understated method of storytelling. By that I mean, he can be subtle in getting important plot points across. Other times, resolutions to key events are passed over. The writing itself is rich and descriptive, without being overly verbose. It is one of my favorite aspects of the series, even if it is occasionally unconventional. As I said in my review of the first book, O’Brian captures the language of the early 19th century wonderfully, and this is no more apparent than in the dialogue.
I have gone back and forth over whether I should rate this book four or five stars before eventually settling upon five. There is no strong plot, and there were a few scenes I would have liked to read but were skipped over, but these reservations were won over the interesting characters which come alive off the pages, the witty dialogue, and by my love for the setting and O’Brian’s depiction of it.
These books are driven by the characters, and one of the key developments in this book is the role that Dr. Maturin plays in the story. In the first book, he was very much a passive character, always observing the main conflicts but not taking part in them. That is not the case in Post Captain, where we see his emergence as an equal to Jack, as someone with his own agenda which comes into conflict with Jack’s. Indeed, the main theme of this book is how Jack and Stephen’s friendship gets tested to the breaking point and how they overcome that conflict.
One stylistic aspect of this book that is worth mentioning in a review is O’Brian’s understated method of storytelling. By that I mean, he can be subtle in getting important plot points across. Other times, resolutions to key events are passed over. The writing itself is rich and descriptive, without being overly verbose. It is one of my favorite aspects of the series, even if it is occasionally unconventional. As I said in my review of the first book, O’Brian captures the language of the early 19th century wonderfully, and this is no more apparent than in the dialogue.
I have gone back and forth over whether I should rate this book four or five stars before eventually settling upon five. There is no strong plot, and there were a few scenes I would have liked to read but were skipped over, but these reservations were won over the interesting characters which come alive off the pages, the witty dialogue, and by my love for the setting and O’Brian’s depiction of it.
Shelved as 'dnf'
November 11, 2021DNF @ 33%
Not sure what happened with this one. It is, hands down, much better written than the first book, which was riddled with incomplete sentences, dangling participles and all kinds of other nonsense that made it near impossible to listen to it and understand what was going on, let alone wrap my head around all the nautical jargon. This was a much smoother listen and had far less jargon.
I also ended up checking out the audio from the library which was narrated by Simon Vance, who I've listened to many times before and who is leagues above Patrick Tull to my ears. Tull just didn't perform well, and the overall audio quality was not as good, probably because they transferred it from a tape to digital and didn't clean it up as well as the Vance performance.
So this should have gone a lot smoother. Unfortunately, I just wasn't compelled to listen, and when I did listen there wasn't anything very interesting happening. Plus, Jack and Stephen felt like different characters, with none of the flare that I enjoyed in the first book. So it's time for me to hang up the towel and say this series just isn't for me.
Not sure what happened with this one. It is, hands down, much better written than the first book, which was riddled with incomplete sentences, dangling participles and all kinds of other nonsense that made it near impossible to listen to it and understand what was going on, let alone wrap my head around all the nautical jargon. This was a much smoother listen and had far less jargon.
I also ended up checking out the audio from the library which was narrated by Simon Vance, who I've listened to many times before and who is leagues above Patrick Tull to my ears. Tull just didn't perform well, and the overall audio quality was not as good, probably because they transferred it from a tape to digital and didn't clean it up as well as the Vance performance.
So this should have gone a lot smoother. Unfortunately, I just wasn't compelled to listen, and when I did listen there wasn't anything very interesting happening. Plus, Jack and Stephen felt like different characters, with none of the flare that I enjoyed in the first book. So it's time for me to hang up the towel and say this series just isn't for me.
February 15, 2020
Another fantastic yarn!!
March 20, 2014
I would give it ten stars if I could!
I can't even get my mind around how much story was in this book, but it was wonderful. There is so much going on from one section to the next. Something always happening. There are no dull moments. Always new things to learn about. So much humor in the dialogue - much of it tongue-in-cheek. Laugh out loud funny at times. Then there are scenes where things are so sad. There is a love story for one and the opposite for another.
Jack - having to evade creditors because his "money man" ran away and he owes everyone. He is captured by a French Captain and spends time in their confinement. He eventually escapes, but then has to constantly evade being caught by the English creditors.
Stephen goes on a couple of missions for the British, but Jack does not know what he does, and Stephen cannot confide in him. Stephen finds out that Jack has been seen with the woman he has feelings for, but neither talks to the other about it. At one point they are at odds with each other and Jack insults Stephen. They arrange for a duel, but it falls through.
There are several boat battles and Jack takes his ship right into the French sea port during one.
Jack is hurt and Stephen patches him up.
Finally, Jack is promoted to Post Captain and gets a temporary assignment. They go out at the end to capture a Spanish treasure and that is where this 2nd story ends.
The stories make me want to learn more about Navel History, especially how the British, French, Spanish were constantly sailing around taking each others' ships. There are so many references to battles in the Mediterranean and out in the Atlantic Ocean. So many different kinds of ships and prizes one moment and and then not. How the seamen were pressed into service on board the ships, and how mixed the crews were. It is facinating how O'Brian describes the ships as they are sailing and how they go about in their battles, the cannons and shots and wood breaking and splinters flying. It is all there.
The human side is so there too. Jack dives into the water to save a man that fell from the top of a sail, even though he knew that there was a shark in the water. Stephen asked him if he wasn't afraid. The conversation was wonderful!
I can't even get my mind around how much story was in this book, but it was wonderful. There is so much going on from one section to the next. Something always happening. There are no dull moments. Always new things to learn about. So much humor in the dialogue - much of it tongue-in-cheek. Laugh out loud funny at times. Then there are scenes where things are so sad. There is a love story for one and the opposite for another.
Jack - having to evade creditors because his "money man" ran away and he owes everyone. He is captured by a French Captain and spends time in their confinement. He eventually escapes, but then has to constantly evade being caught by the English creditors.
Stephen goes on a couple of missions for the British, but Jack does not know what he does, and Stephen cannot confide in him. Stephen finds out that Jack has been seen with the woman he has feelings for, but neither talks to the other about it. At one point they are at odds with each other and Jack insults Stephen. They arrange for a duel, but it falls through.
There are several boat battles and Jack takes his ship right into the French sea port during one.
Jack is hurt and Stephen patches him up.
Finally, Jack is promoted to Post Captain and gets a temporary assignment. They go out at the end to capture a Spanish treasure and that is where this 2nd story ends.
The stories make me want to learn more about Navel History, especially how the British, French, Spanish were constantly sailing around taking each others' ships. There are so many references to battles in the Mediterranean and out in the Atlantic Ocean. So many different kinds of ships and prizes one moment and and then not. How the seamen were pressed into service on board the ships, and how mixed the crews were. It is facinating how O'Brian describes the ships as they are sailing and how they go about in their battles, the cannons and shots and wood breaking and splinters flying. It is all there.
The human side is so there too. Jack dives into the water to save a man that fell from the top of a sail, even though he knew that there was a shark in the water. Stephen asked him if he wasn't afraid. The conversation was wonderful!
June 12, 2018
This is now my third time reading through this brilliant series and I am reminded again how beautifully written and how wonderfully, addictively enjoyable they are.
Post Captain is the second in the sequence and the book in which O'Brian really hit his stride, I think. Jack Aubrey is a naval Commander during the Napoleonic Wars, struggling to find a ship, to avoid being arrested for debt and getting into all sorts of tangles with his heart, while his friend Stephen Maturin continues in his eccentric way to pursue his medical and philosophical studies and to work as an intelligence agent, while around them the politics, corruption and patronage of the time have to be negotiated.
Patrick O'Brian is steeped in the period (1803 in Post Captain) and his knowledge of the manners, politics, social mores and naval matters of the time is deep and wide. Combined with a magnificent gift for both prose and storytelling, it makes something very special indeed. The books are so perfectly paced, with some calmer, quieter but still engrossing passages and some quite thrilling action sequences. O'Brian's handling of language is masterly, with the dialogue being especially brilliant, but also things like the way his sentences become shorter and more staccato in the action passages, making them heart-poundingly exciting. There are also laugh-out-loud moments and an overall sense of sheer involvement and pleasure in reading.
I cannot recommend these books too highly. They are that rare thing; fine literature which are also books which I can't wait to read more of. Wonderful stuff.
February 5, 2016
Damned if these books aren't getting better, after an indifferent Vol. 1.
October 11, 2018
Glorious.
Patrick O'Brian's "Post Captain" is a seafaring yarn that bests all other seafaring yarns — though, in truth, this is only the second book in a series of 20 so perhaps it's too early to say. But I loved it.
It reads very much like a Victorian novel — part Jane Austen, part Robert Louis Stevenson, part naval encyclopedia — and like any other novel written in this style, it takes some getting used to. In fact, I started this on a trip back in May, set it down after 30 pages or so as I was not able to get into the Victorian vibe, and only a week ago did I pick it up again. This time I plowed right through the entire thing without barely a break.
Initially, I had a hard time finding the "voice" of these characters. It's been some two years since I read the first entry in the series, "Master and Commander", and I struggled to get into Jack Aubrey's rhythm once again. As a result, I purchased the audiobook, gloriously narrated by Patrick Tull who was more than up to the task, and read along in my paperback version.
I found that this helped me immensely. Not only does Patrick Tull do a wonderful job narrating this novel, but words that I would have pronounced one way — being the naive American I am who's got absolutely zero knowledge of life at sea in Her Majesty's Service — turned out to be pronounced an entirely different way.
"Ah, so 'forecastle' is actually pronounced folk-sel, not fore-cas-el, and it's not topsails but top-sels, and stuns'l is stun-sel ...", (I could go on). Tull also does an excellent job at reading French and does magnificent accents. All of which is to say, if you start reading this and find it hard to digest the Victorian language, as I did, supplementing the book with the audio might very well help you as it did me.
As to the actual story, I enjoyed this one a good deal more than Book 1, which was also very good but served largely as a set up for the series as a whole. The heart of this series is clearly the relationship between Captain Aubrey and his friend Dr. Stephen Maturin. That relationship is challenged here because of — what else? — women.
While we're on the subject of women, I must mention that Patrick O'Brian writes his female characters just as well as he writes his male ones. The women here never come off as caricatures the way other excellent male writers' female characters sometimes do (thinking of Dora in Charles Dickens' otherwise masterful "David Copperfield" here).
The women here are splendidly fleshed out, though. Diana Villiers and Sophie Williams are both wonderfully rendered, and much of this novel is concerned with Aubrey and Maturin's pursuit of the aforementioned Miss Williams and Ms. Villiers. It's practically "Sense and Sensibility" with ships (which makes it much better).
Oh, and the dialogue. Does Patrick O'Brian ever excel at writing dialogue! There are so many examples I could cite, but I especially love the dialogue surrounding Dr. Maturin's decision to bring bees aboard their ship, the Lively.
"Stephen," he said, "how are your bees?"
"They are very well, I thank you; they show great activity, even enthusiasm. But," he added, with a slight hesitation, "I seem to detect a certain reluctance to return to their hive."
"Do you mean to say you let them out?" cried Jack. "Do you mean that there are sixty thousand bees howling for blood in the cabin?"
"No, no. Oh no. Not above half that number; perhaps even less. And if you do not provoke them, I am persuaded you may go to and fro without the least concern."
Later, Admiral Haddock informs Jack that he is entrusting two women to his care on board the ship, and produces this delightful stream of words:
"'Oh, never mind them. They are only girls, you know — they can rough it — don't put yourself out. Think what you will save them in pin-money. Stow them anywhere. Berth them with the Doctor, ha, ha! There you are, Dr. Maturin. I am happy to see you. You would not mind it, eh? Eh? Ha, ha, ha. I saw you, you sly dog. Take care of him, Dr. Aubrey; he is a sly one.' The scattered officers on the quarterdeck frowned; the Admiral belonged to an older, coarser Navy; and he had been dining with his carnal colleague, the port admiral."
Ha, ha, ha, indeed!
I very much look forward to continuing the series and seeing what adventures await Aubrey and Maturin next!
Patrick O'Brian's "Post Captain" is a seafaring yarn that bests all other seafaring yarns — though, in truth, this is only the second book in a series of 20 so perhaps it's too early to say. But I loved it.
It reads very much like a Victorian novel — part Jane Austen, part Robert Louis Stevenson, part naval encyclopedia — and like any other novel written in this style, it takes some getting used to. In fact, I started this on a trip back in May, set it down after 30 pages or so as I was not able to get into the Victorian vibe, and only a week ago did I pick it up again. This time I plowed right through the entire thing without barely a break.
Initially, I had a hard time finding the "voice" of these characters. It's been some two years since I read the first entry in the series, "Master and Commander", and I struggled to get into Jack Aubrey's rhythm once again. As a result, I purchased the audiobook, gloriously narrated by Patrick Tull who was more than up to the task, and read along in my paperback version.
I found that this helped me immensely. Not only does Patrick Tull do a wonderful job narrating this novel, but words that I would have pronounced one way — being the naive American I am who's got absolutely zero knowledge of life at sea in Her Majesty's Service — turned out to be pronounced an entirely different way.
"Ah, so 'forecastle' is actually pronounced folk-sel, not fore-cas-el, and it's not topsails but top-sels, and stuns'l is stun-sel ...", (I could go on). Tull also does an excellent job at reading French and does magnificent accents. All of which is to say, if you start reading this and find it hard to digest the Victorian language, as I did, supplementing the book with the audio might very well help you as it did me.
As to the actual story, I enjoyed this one a good deal more than Book 1, which was also very good but served largely as a set up for the series as a whole. The heart of this series is clearly the relationship between Captain Aubrey and his friend Dr. Stephen Maturin. That relationship is challenged here because of — what else? — women.
While we're on the subject of women, I must mention that Patrick O'Brian writes his female characters just as well as he writes his male ones. The women here never come off as caricatures the way other excellent male writers' female characters sometimes do (thinking of Dora in Charles Dickens' otherwise masterful "David Copperfield" here).
The women here are splendidly fleshed out, though. Diana Villiers and Sophie Williams are both wonderfully rendered, and much of this novel is concerned with Aubrey and Maturin's pursuit of the aforementioned Miss Williams and Ms. Villiers. It's practically "Sense and Sensibility" with ships (which makes it much better).
Oh, and the dialogue. Does Patrick O'Brian ever excel at writing dialogue! There are so many examples I could cite, but I especially love the dialogue surrounding Dr. Maturin's decision to bring bees aboard their ship, the Lively.
"Stephen," he said, "how are your bees?"
"They are very well, I thank you; they show great activity, even enthusiasm. But," he added, with a slight hesitation, "I seem to detect a certain reluctance to return to their hive."
"Do you mean to say you let them out?" cried Jack. "Do you mean that there are sixty thousand bees howling for blood in the cabin?"
"No, no. Oh no. Not above half that number; perhaps even less. And if you do not provoke them, I am persuaded you may go to and fro without the least concern."
Later, Admiral Haddock informs Jack that he is entrusting two women to his care on board the ship, and produces this delightful stream of words:
"'Oh, never mind them. They are only girls, you know — they can rough it — don't put yourself out. Think what you will save them in pin-money. Stow them anywhere. Berth them with the Doctor, ha, ha! There you are, Dr. Maturin. I am happy to see you. You would not mind it, eh? Eh? Ha, ha, ha. I saw you, you sly dog. Take care of him, Dr. Aubrey; he is a sly one.' The scattered officers on the quarterdeck frowned; the Admiral belonged to an older, coarser Navy; and he had been dining with his carnal colleague, the port admiral."
Ha, ha, ha, indeed!
I very much look forward to continuing the series and seeing what adventures await Aubrey and Maturin next!
January 3, 2023
I promised a friend that I’d read one Aubrey/Mautrin novel a year over the holidays until I complete the series - this was year 2 which means I’ll be 70 when that most enjoyable promise is fulfilled!
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