Desolation Island: (Book 5) (Aubrey/Maturin Series) (Paperback)

by Patrick O'Brian (Author) "The breakfast-parlour was the most cheerful room in Ashgrove Cottage, and although the builders had ruined the garden with heaps of sand and unslaked lime..." (more)
Key Phrases: prime seamen, larboard beam, forenoon watch, Captain Aubrey, Sir Joseph, Captain Moore (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Captain Bligh (yes, the guy from the Bounty) needs to be rescued, and the Royal Navy has the perfect man for the job: Captain Jack Aubrey. With his friend and cloak-and-dagger expert Stephen Maturin in tow, Aubrey sets off for Australia. Several factors, including an attractive spy and a small-scale epidemic, conspire to change his plans, and before long his frigate is being pursued into Antarctic waters by a Dutch man-of-war. Five installments into the series, the Aubrey-Maturin story remains (to quote The Observer) "the best thing afloat since Horatio Hornblower."

Review
Good history, fascinating erudition, espionage, romance, fever in the hold, a wreck in lost latitudes, and an action at sea that for sheer descriptive power can match anything in sea-fiction. -- Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian

Good history, fascinating erudition, espionage, romance, fever in the hold, a wreck in lost latitudes, and an action at sea that for sheer descriptive power can match anything in sea fiction. (Christopher Wordsworth -The Guardian )

I have been enthralled since reading Master and Commander. Now, having just finished Desolation Island, I find myself curiously anxious to slow down. True, nine volumes await me, but what I have read is so rich and splendid that I need to ponder and digest. (Robert Massie )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (August 17, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039330812X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393308129
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,406 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 5 in The Aubrey-Maturin Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars O'Brian's height, December 1, 2000

By	I. Westray (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Desolation Island is one of the richest, and at the same time most easily approached, titles in the Aubrey Maturin series. I'm an avid Patrick O'Brian reader, one who's been through the series more than once, and I'm running through this one again right now at spare moments.

Maybe it's heretical to suggest not starting with the first book, but Desolation Island, H.M.S. Surprise, and The Far Side of the World are the ones I recommend to people when I'm trying to get them hooked. Master and Commander is excellent, but it seems to me like O'Brian was writing for a genre audience to start with. (The historical setting is truly wonderful and the characters are a delight, but he was writing for readers who were already interested, say, in the detailed workings of the royal shipyards.) By the time he got to Surprise he had hit his stride, at least for me. The books had stopped being "Another variation on sea life during the Napoleonic age" for him, and the world he was writing just feels complete and right.

Also, those three books all feature long, solo voyages. It's a simple point, but that plotline is easier for a beginning fan to understand and follow. In some ways it gets at the heart of O'Brian's writing best, too. The ship's community as a close, isolated society, the complex nature of Jack's choices as captain, Stephen's isolation with his secret life, the consolation they take in their friendship -- those elements all shine during the long voyages throughout the series.

Desolation Island, as a starting point, also includes one of the most exciting, tense chases in the series. It has a full set of complex minor characters whose fates you really do care about, and it's one of those O'Brian plots that gives you a double-take or two if you don't know where it's going. Highly recommended.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another masterful work from O'Brian, February 12, 1999

By A Customer

One of the more suspenseful books in O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series. Also one of the grimmest. Much of the book details a naval chase in perilous seas with a gut-wrenching outcome. O'Brian's shipboard characterizations are further deepened. Jack's brief recollection of how the sailors once convinced young Babbington he was pregnant is a howl. And it is a throw away idea caught in a brief paragraph. O'Brian seems to have an infinite supply of nuance and human insight. Desolation Island is more than seafaring genre, this is a masterful work that can stand with some of the best contemporary fiction.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A solid installment in the series, August 3, 2002

By	J. Mullin (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After the disjointed Mauritius Command, I found Desolation Island a refreshing change to the plot devices that maked this series worthwhile. Instead of loosely commanding a squadron of ships as in the prior novel, Captain Jack Aubrey is again commanding a single ship here, the Leopard, accompanied by his good friend (and fascinating character), Stephen Maturin. Stephen really takes center stage in the novel, since his on-again off-again relationship with Diana is explored early, and Stephen (with his intelligence background) is intricately involved in the action of the novel as American agents are aboard the Leopard, on the verge of the outbreak of the War of 1812.

Since the entire novel takes place, more or less, on board the Leopard we see more of the interaction among the characters, especially Aubrey-Maturin, an odd American stowaway, and a pretty female prisoner with ties to both Diana and the American stowaway. There is a tremendous naval battle involving a much larger Dutch ship, and a desperate detour towards the Antarctic as Aubrey fights to save his ship among calamity and possible mutiny as the Leopard races to rescue the infamous Captain Bligh. For fans of the series, there is a great deal here to like, and I thought the book was as good as anything I have read thus far by O'Brian.