Customer Reviews

Master and Commander (Aubrey-Maturin)

5 star:		(203)
4 star:		(47)
3 star:		(32)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Some critics have referred to the Aubrey/Maturin books as one long novel united not only by their historical setting but also by the central plot element of the Aubrey/Maturin friendship. Having read these fine books over a period of several years, I decided to evaluate their cumulative integrity by reading them consecutively in order of publication over a period of a few weeks. This turned out to be a rewarding enterprise. For readers unfamiliar with these books, they describe the experiences of a Royal Navy officer and his close friend and traveling companion, a naval surgeon. The experiences cover a broad swath of the Napoleonic Wars and virtually the whole globe.
Rereading all the books confirmed that O'Brian is a superb writer and that his ability to evoke the past is outstanding. O'Brian has numerous gifts as a writer. He is the master of the long, careful description, and the short, telling episode. His ability to construct ingenious but creditable plots is first-rate, probably because he based much of the action of his books on actual events. For example, some of the episodes of Jack Aubrey's career are based on the life of the famous frigate captain, Lord Cochrane. O'Brian excels also in his depiction of characters. His ability to develop psychologically creditable characters through a combination of dialogue, comments by other characters, and description is tremendous. O'Brien's interest in psychology went well beyond normal character development, some books contain excellent case studies of anxiety, depression, and mania.
Reading O'Brien gives vivid view of the early 19th century. The historian Bernard Bailyn, writing of colonial America, stated once that the 18th century world was not only pre-industrial but also pre-humanitarian (paraphrase). This is true as well for the early 19th century depicted by O'Brien. The casual and invariable presence of violence, brutality, and death is a theme running through all the books. The constant threats to life are the product not only of natural forces beyond human control, particularly the weather and disease, but also of relative human indifference to suffering. There is nothing particularly romantic about the world O'Brien describes but it also a certain grim grandeur. O'Brien also shows the somewhat transitional nature of the early 19th century. The British Navy and its vessals were the apogee of what could be achieved by pre-industrial technology. This is true both of the technology itself and the social organization needed to produce and use the massive sailing vessals. Aubrey's navy is an organization reflecting its society; an order based on deference, rigid hierarchy, primitive notions of honor, favoritism, and very, very corrupt. At the same time, it was one of the largest and most effective bureaucracies in human history to that time. The nature of service exacted great penalities for failure in a particularly environment, and great success was rewarded greatly. In some ways, it was a ruthless meritocracy whose structure and success anticipates the great expansion of government power and capacity seen in the rest of the 19th century.
O'Brian is also the great writer about male friendship. There are important female characters in these books but since most of the action takes place at sea, male characters predominate. The friendship between Aubrey and Maturin is the central armature of the books and is a brilliant creation. The position of women in these books is ambiguous. There are sympathetic characters, notably Aubrey's long suffering wife. Other women figures, notably Maturin's wife, leave a less positive impression. On board ship, women tend to have a disruptive, even malign influence.
How did O'Brian manage to sustain his achievement over 20 books? Beyond his technical abilities as a writer and the instrinsic interest of the subject, O'Brien made a series of very intelligent choices. He has not one but two major protagonists. The contrasting but equally interesting figures of Aubrey and Maturin allowed O'Brien to a particularly rich opportunity to expose different facets of character development and to vary plots carefully. This is quite difficult and I'm not aware of any other writer who has been able to accomplish such sustained development of two major protagonists for such a prolonged period. O'Brian's use of his historical setting is very creative. The scenes and events in the books literally span the whole globe as Aubrey and Maturin encounter numerous cultures and societies. The naval setting allowed him also to introduce numerous new and interesting characters. O'Brian was able to make his stories attractive to many audiences. Several of these stories can be enjoyed as psychological novels, as adventure stories, as suspense novels, and even one as a legal thriller. O'Brian was also a very funny writer, successful at both broad, low humor, and sophisticated wit. Finally, O'Brian made efforts to link some of the books together. While a number are complete in themselves, others form components of extended, multi-book narratives. Desolation Island, Fortune of War, and The Surgeon's Mate are one such grouping. Treason's Harbor, The Far Side of the World, and The Reverse of the Medal are another. The Letter of Marque and the ensuing 4 books, centered around a circumnavigation, are another.
Though the average quality of the books is remarkably high, some are better than others. I suspect that different readers will have different favorites. I personally prefer some of the books with greater psychological elements. The first book, Master and Commander, is one of my favorites. The last 2 or 3, while good, are not as strong as earlier books. I suspect O'Brian's stream of invention was beginning to diminish. All can be read profitably as stand alone works though there is definitely something to be gained by reading in consecutive order.

The first clue you have that Master and Commander is not a typical sea adventure is when a sailor is hanged in the opening pages for sexually molesting the ship's goat. This kicks off a gritty, realistic, and scrupulously-researched historical adventure that smashes C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels like a broadside from a seventy-gun frigate.

I first heard of Patrick O'Brian when he died three years ago and was movingly eulogized in George Will's column. Now I don't normally read historical fiction, especially military historical fiction, but Will made such a strong case that I felt obliged to at least check O'Brian out. I'm glad I did; Master and Commander is a well-written, powerful book that succeeds as a character study, an obsessively-researched recreation of early 19th-century life, and as an adventure.

The novel, the first in a twenty-book series, opens with Jack Aubrey, a young lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy, being granted his long-awaited promotion to the rank of captain (or officially, "master and commander") and the command of the Sophie, a modest little vessel in the Mediterranean. At a concert, Jack nearly comes to blows with the haughty intellectual Dr. Stephen Maturin, but the two quickly reconcile over breakfast and Jack, whose ship is desperately undermanned, offers the penniless Maturin a post as ship's surgeon.

The two men eventually become best friends, despite their being a sort of seaborne Odd Couple. Aubrey, unlike most fictional heroes, is not a silent, craggy-jawed Adonis; he's fat, red-faced, good-humored, and a bit of a buffoon, the kind of person who laughs maniacally at his own jokes. As his second-in-command says, "He can be a very agreeable companion, of course, but there are times when he shows that particular beefy English insensibility." Aubrey's counterpart Stephen Maturin is a doctor, a natural philosopher whose idea of a good time is to obsessively catalog his lepidoptera...the very caricature of the effete intellectual. As Master and Commander unfolds, though, O'Brian shows us that both men have hidden depths. Aubrey, so clownish and naive on land, is a brilliant seaman and warrior, with an instinctual understanding of leadership and strategy. And Maturin, treated by everyone as a harmless eccentric, is eventually shown to be a master spy, fluent in a dozen languages and a cold-blooded killer with sword and pistol. Aubrey and Maturin are great characters, and they elevate this book to greatness with them. Their conversations are witty and interesting, and we resent it when they're interrupted by another battle or momentary crisis.

That's why, though marketed as a historical adventure, Master and Commander is much more the story of these two: how they interact with one another and with the war-torn but genteel world around them. The fighting is often incidental to the plot, dispensed with in a few sentences...though when he wants to, O'Brian can deliver a white-knuckled chase or a roaring battle as well as anyone. His writing comes across as a sort of widescreen, modernized version of Jane Austen's formalism, combining gritty, bloody reality with arch diction and mordant wit. O'Brian's writing in this book is certainly not without its faults - he glosses over or summarizes conversations and situations that would have been compelling had they been played out, and the book is far too episodic, moving from one incident to the next without enough direction. Most of MASTER AND COMMANDER's flaws are unique to the book, however, and have vanished by the second and subsequent volumes. The fact that O'Brian could polish his literary art to such a high sheen in such a short time is one more testament to the man's vast talent.

This book is a great introduction to a great series by a writer whose stature is only going to grow as time passes. Do yourself a favor and pick it up now.

Sit back in your favorite recliner and prepare yourself for an exciting adventure! Here, in the pages of "MASTER AND COMMANDER", the reader is introduced to Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and Stephen Maturin, physician, linguist, scholar, spy, and then some.

The novel begins in Port Mahon in 1800. Aubrey, for the moment, is a naval officer without a command, restless and impatient for action. (Britain and Revolutionary France are at war.) Quite by accident, he literally bumps up against Stephen Maturin and a budding friendship develops between them.

O'Brian faithfully evokes the atmosphere of those distant times. The language may seem a bit stilted and obscure. But part of O'Brian's genius as a writer is that as you read deeply into this novel, you'll soon find yourself swept along on the ebb and flow of events. All your senses will be titillated.

Besides Aubrey and Maturin, O'Brian creates here a variety of richly textured characters who bring vividly forth the ambience of wartime shipboard life in the Age of Sail.

So, if you're looking for a thoroughly engaging and captivating story, "MASTER AND COMMANDER" is it! Highly recommended.

(I first read "MASTER AND COMMANDER" in July 1994. Ever since, I've been hooked on the Aubrey-Maturin series.)

'Come, sir, cannot I prevail upon you to go to sea? A man-of-war is the very thing for a
philosopher, above all in the Mediterranean: there are the birds, the fishes--I could promise you
some monstrous strange fishes--the natural phenomena, the meteors, the chance of prize-money.
For even Aristotle would have been moved by prize-money.... '

'A ship must be a most instructive theatre for an inquiring mind....'

'Prodigiously instructive, I do assure you, Doctor.'

-Jack Aubrey convincing Stephen Maturin to ship out with him (Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander)

Like most, I first learned of Patrick O'Brian's excellent series of naval adventures in the pages of the New York Times Book Review. There, on January 6, 1991, Richard Snow wrote that the Aubrey and Maturin books were : "...the best historical novels ever written." This statement is not as jarring now as it was then. We've grown accustomed to seeing rows of O'Brian's books on store shelves and millions have joined what was once an exclusive cult, but at the time Snow was writing the novels were still a well-kept secret, despite the fact that O'Brian had then been writing them for over twenty years. At any rate, like any good little trend-sucking dilettante, I rushed out to find the first book in the series, Master and Commander, read it as quickly as possible, and was well and truly stumped.

I liked the characters, found the detailed portrayal of life aboard ship to be extremely interesting, and enjoyed much of the humor of the book. But there was something really curious and elusive about the storytelling. In the first place, the heroes are mere observers of the climactic sea battle, having been captured earlier, which seemed especially curious for an adventure story. Even more disconcerting was the sense that I lacked much of the background information that the author expected the reader to bring to the novel. It seemed as if O'Brian expected you to already be familiar with much of the early 19th century naval terminology, with the intricacies of the Napoleonic Wars, and with the culture, customs and language of the day. It was like listening to a comedian and only understanding one out of every two or three jokes--you titter nervously and you can follow along thanks to context, but it's a tad humiliating. I did like it enough to read the next though, Post Captain, and as I did, the joke finally dawned on me.

Patrick O'Brian writes these novels so that they could be read, understood, and enjoyed by the characters who populate them. The reason that they so effectively transport us to another time and place is because they seem to have been written there and then. His mission here is not to explain that epoch to us, but to present it for our consideration, nearly unadorned by modern sensibilities. He writes as if he were actually a contemporary of his heroes and the books have the quality, not of historical novels at all, but instead of classic tales newly rediscovered. Thanks to this unusual style, O'Brian is more often compared to Jane Austen than to C. S. Forester.

I don't mean to mislead anyone; the books aren't for all tastes and, even if you love them, O'Brian's manner can be frustrating--you sometimes wish you had an interpreter. But once you figure out what he's doing, if you accept the technique, you're in for a real treat. The writing is outstanding. The setting is endlessly interesting. Aubrey, the bluff and hearty sea captain, and Maturin, the vulpine doctor and spy, make for a classic pairing of steadfast opposites, in the tradition of Holmes and Watson. It is not easy reading but it is rewarding and once you read a couple, you'll be hooked. And be warned, before he died earlier this year, O'Brian had completed twenty novels in the series, so you'll be hooked for a good long time.

GRADE : A+

I found the O'Brian series in a bookshop on Oxford Street Paddington (Sydney Australia) and was in desperate need of an excellent series to get stuck into. Well I did and I read the lot, I just hope more will be written. Master and Commander did nearly lose me in the first few chapters as I felt it was all conversation and virtually no prose but I stuck with it and was so delightfully rewarded with the story telling, character development, action and suspense that I couldn't put the book down. Now there's something you should know about me, I'm a woman in my 20's and thus a rarity when it comes to being an avid fan of Patrick O'Brian. But I thoroughly enjoyed learning about men and their way of seeing the world. I also thoroughly loved how O'Brian drew the women who came to be so important in later books of the series. So women reading this, go get this book. This series is set on a British man-o-war in wartime with plenty of action and it is primarily about men ! and there are some details that it would be easier to pretend didn't happen; it is also a story that makes you laugh at the wonderful dry wit. The observations of people and friendship aren't to be found elsewhere. I lament the fact that I've now read all O'Brian's seafaring stories and only hope at least two more in the Aubrey series can be written. So if you want a good laugh, well a series of them more like, an insight into life in a different world and into men. But be prepared to read the entire series and finding yourself buying three books ahead at a time so you don't find yourself finishing one at 10pm and running all over the city in search of an open bookshop with the next one on the self! Now I am back to trying to find another excellent author, the only problem is, my requirements are tougher than ever before, but at least I can look forward to breaking my rule about re-reading novels and get stuck back into seafaring life in a couple of years!

The first in Patrick O'Brian's twenty-volume "Aubrey-Maturin" series, "Master and Commander" is both a compelling narrative and a fine foundation for the books to follow. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, British naval officer Jack Aubrey is promoted to his first command of a warship, the sloop "Sophie". He befriends an eccentric physician, Stephen Maturin, and convinces him to sail as ship's surgeon. What follows is a sort of odyssey, a linear narrative as the Sophie cruises the Mediterranean, capturing cargo ships and fighting French and Spanish warships. O'Brian has a wonderful, mature prose, a spare style that omits repetitious detail while allowing characters and events to describe themselves and leaving the minutiae to the reader's imagination. His complete ease with nineteenth century maritime affairs, from the idiom to the equipment is wholly convincing, yet never patronizing. Readers familiar with neither the sea nor the era will be swept along for the ride. Aubrey is heroic, but three-dimensional. He is flawed and sometimes unlikable, courageous yet occasionally frustratingly inept. Other characters are drawn with equal attention to detail and humanity. This is a fine book, a wonderful sea story. Norton's newly-released edition of the entire series is attractive, and the books continue to please.

I first read Master and Commander shortly after it was published in the early seventies. I found it to be extremely interesting and have since read all twenty volumes of the Aubrey/Maturin chronicle. These books are not really novels, but studies of the lives and progress of two men during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While the main emphasis is on the British Royal Navy during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, the continuing story also gives an in-depth look at the society and culture of the period. The series is not for everyone, but rather for those of us who love a rousing yarn of the sea. I thought I was pretty well up on sea-faring terms but I found that O'Brian came up with a number I had never heard of. So, if you don't like detailed ship terminology, the series is probably not for you.

You can't read just one of these books, because you really want to absorb the whole series. They are a fascinating look at the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812, accurate and detailed, using actual accounts and records as source material. Post Captain Jack Aubrey and his surgeon Stephen Maturin are realistic men, not Rambo-type heroes who can keep slugging and hanging from cliffs while suffering dire injuries. They have their human faults, but are wonderful companions in a wide variety of (mostly nautical) adventures. Okay, sometimes there's more talking and introspection than action. A lot more. Did you ever read "Moby Dick"? If you need to have the protagonist's life threatened every 10 pages, read some predictable male escapist fiction--there's plenty of that around.

I don't have much patience with writers who keep cranking out the same book over and over, making money from the millions of readers who are slaves to an author's name on the cover. Like Harlequin romances and that ilk, the stuff you see in airport bookstores. O'Brian is different--his books are always new and interesting, and one story leads to the next in a very natural manner. The series is a protracted adventure on the high seas, with a couple of likable companions and the rest of their crew. The books are quick reads, easy to hold. Or you can do as I do and get the audio version, narrated by Patrick Tull, who interprets his characters wonderfully.

There can be no greater pleasure for a devoted bookworm such as I than to discover an author with a considerable body of work already published. Imagine my delight to discover Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series. Having taken the advice of other readers in these reviews, I bought Master and Commander to begin with. So captivating was it that I bought all of the titles in the series and have been working my way through them; now I have just Blue at the Mizzen left unread. O'Brian truly takes the reader on a voyage of discovery through the naval exploits of the Napoleonic wars, through Arctic storms, shipwrecks, shattering broadsides from men of war, peaceful coral strands, taking in the political intrigue of the Admiralty and the world of espionage along the way. To any potential reader I can only say, read the books in order - they comprise one long narrative. If we all asked Mr O'Brian to give us just a couple more as a millenium gift, would we hear his reply in the hallowed words of Aubrey's manservant, Preserved Killick, 'Which I'm bringing, ain't I?' Everyone can dream.

To Mr. Holmes who asked the question of what happens when he has read the last page of the last of the O'Brian sea adventures, based on his fictional characters Capn. Aubrey and Dr.Maturin. For one hope that Patrick O'Brian continues to live a long healthy life. He manages to turn out a new book each year.

When I had completed reading all 18 books, I simply started with Master and Commander and read them again. When I was bed ridden due to my Cancer,I reread them a third time. Each reading enhances your appreciation of O'Brian and his magnificent use of language and detail of the times our heros lived in. I have read every author of books in this genre, no one comes close to O'Brian. Amazingly, his books have only become very popular in the past five years. His following has grown and his books will be read for decades to come.

Mr. O'Brian, thank you for all the reading pleasure you have given me for the past 10 years.