The twenty-one novels in patrick o’brian’s aubrey-maturin series are the greatest sustained work of English-language fiction written in the twentieth century because of the sheer skill of its characters, plots, language, and themes, because of the breadth of his scholarship, and by the sheer endurance of O’Brian’s invention.
The series follows Jack Aubrey, a fighting captain in the British Navy, and his private friend Stephen Maturin, a naturalist, naval surgeon and intelligence officer, as they fight in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.
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The series begins with superlative novels that include the books on my best of o’brian list below. Then, like the happiest of enduring marriages, Aubrey-Maturin’s novels take a modest step up to very good; with my metaphorical marriage encompassing not only jack and stephen’s monumental friendship, but more importantly, o’brian’s and her readers’ great devotion to each other.
I’ve listed my five personal favourites, ranked in order of admiration, with notes and a few spoilers. (I’ve included a complete list of Aubrey-Maturin novels below these reviews for your convenience.)
post captain (1972)
patrick o’brian’s magnificent sophomore effort is the show’s crown jewel. The novel opens with O’Brian in full Jane Austen mode, following a young Jack Aubrey with a cash prize in his pocket and time on his hands due to an unfortunate lull in the Napoleonic Wars, as he pursues his future wife, Sophie. williams.
Soon, the fight breaks out again, but more significantly, Jack and Stephen’s friendship is broken by a second woman (Stephen’s future wife, Diana Villiers) and they challenge each other to a duel. This is the only time in the series that Aubrey and Maturin’s enduring friendship is shaken, and it makes for one of the most difficult and poignant reads in the novels.
In Post Captain, O’Brian’s ability to write complex, lucid, and compelling battle scenes emerges in all its glory, as does his humor, especially when Jack is forced to flee. from a suddenly hostile Frenchman. territory dressing up as a dancing bear.
unlike many of the later novels in the aubrey-maturin series, which don’t end but simply stop, post captain concludes with a bang.
O’brian places Jack in command of one of four British ships that captured a Spanish treasure fleet bringing gold from the New World to finance Spain’s entry into the war against England. Stephen, in his emerging role as an indispensable intelligence officer for the British, gathers the information that makes the capture possible.
hms surprise (1973)
In hms surprise, the pacing is faster, the action more exciting, the stakes higher, and the plot architecture tighter than in post captain, the one immediately following in sequence of the series.
for my money, hms surprise features the best scenario of the entire series: the brilliant and daring rescue of stephen by jack, who has been captured as a spy by the french and is being tortured in the city of port mahon in one of the balearic islands. This is also the moment when the friendship between Jack and Stephen becomes stronger than death, and thus the great and abiding heart of Aubrey-Maturin’s novels begins to beat.
In hms surprise, both jack and stephen face important rivals. For Jack, it is the French Admiral Linois, who defeated him in the first book of the series, Master and Commander. For Stephen, he is a new contender for Diana’s affections, whom he challenges to a duel that leads to another of the series’ most famous sequences, in which Stephen performs surgery on himself.
Finally, hms surprise introduces two more great elements from the novels. The first is the theme of the problematic nature of marriage, as Jack hopes for happiness with Sophie in the final lines of the book (Jack predicts that the future will be “pure paradise”). the second is exotic places. India features prominently in hms surprise, and future novels will take jack and stephen around the world.
the fortune of war (1979)
jack and stephen are equal friends, but jack is more often the agent of action in the novels, partly because he is the captain of the frigates stephen serves on and partly because his terrible bad judgment in almost every aspects of his life except as a frigate captain is always getting him into trouble.
The Fortune of War is the only book in the Aubrey-Maturin series that actually belongs to Stephen. In it, he and Jack have been captured by the Americans during the War of 1812. They are both taken to Boston, where a badly wounded Jack is taken prisoner, but Stephen walks quite freely, as the Americans believe he is just a surgeon. rather than a British agent.
however,
the french agents, also in boston, know better and engage stephen in a deadly game of cat and mouse that transforms the fortune of war into the only true thriller of spies from the series. In the mix are Diana Villiers, that brilliant complicator of Stephen’s life, and a hair-thin escape that nicely wraps up the novel.
See Also: Theodore Boone – Book Series In Order
also in the fortune of war, o’brian highlights the double nature of stephen maturin. In the novels up to this point, we’ve known Stephen as an accomplished naturalist, committed physician, and talented spy, but there were only hints of his deadly cruelty. Here, Stephen kills without hesitation or regret when driven by circumstances, and O’Brian creates another contrast with his great friend, Jack Aubrey.
Jack, as a naval officer, is personally responsible for far more deaths than Stephen, but Jack blithely regards war as the best professional sport in the world. the rewards are immense, the rules complicated and subtle, losing often deadly, but players feel little real animosity for their opponents as long as they adhere to the laws of the game. In Stephen’s War, there are no rules, the killing is vicious and personal, and grudges extend beyond declarations of peace. another way to say it, of the two men, it’s stephen who has the soul of a killer.
the other side of the world (1984)
as the aubrey-maturin series progresses, the plots of the books become less discrete and the story arcs flatten; so the novels morph into a continuous narrative that flourishes with asides, digressions, false starts, storms and accidents, sudden setbacks, mission changes caused by the whims of jack’s superiors or geopolitical shifts, and messy complexity. of the characters above all.
the other side of the world is a particularly rich example of these qualities. In the novel, Jack is sent on the HMS Surprise to stop an American frigate from attacking British whalers in the South Seas, and almost nothing goes right. He is significantly delayed by a thunderstorm off the coast of Brazil which damages his ship and requires major repairs, allowing the Americans to slip into the Pacific and attack the whalers. Later, a typhoon nearly destroys Jack’s frigate and destroys the American ship for him. the crew is unhappy with an old, incompetent midshipman who they think brings bad luck. Stephen finds himself embroiled in political intrigue as he enjoys his opportunities to collect scientific specimens. and much more.
there is something existential about all this chaos, and without suggesting that o’brian intended to write a philosophical novel, he has too much sense and talent as an artist to bother with such things, the total vision of the other side in the world offers exactly that.
desolate island (1978)
If the other side of the world flirted with existentialism, islands of desolation approaches this grim philosophy and gives it a big wet kiss.
Jack accepts command of the Leopard, an old ship barely fit to navigate the English Channel, on a mission to transport prisoners to Australia. these prisoners attack and kill some of his guards. the ship is stalled and battered by storms. an epidemic kills most of the prisoners and much of the crew. the leopard is pursued and nearly destroyed by a much more powerful Dutch ship of the line. An iceberg damages the leopard so severely that Jack desperately lands on a desolate island (one of many in the world at the time) where they risk being stranded permanently.
desolation island contains two of my favorite extended scenes. The first is the Dutch ship’s pursuit of the leopard, which takes place in the roaring 1940s, where the waves are mountainous and O’Brian’s descriptive ability is superb. The second is the team’s prolonged stay on the cold, desolate island of the novel’s title, which Stephen considers to be a natural philosopher’s paradise that he is in no hurry to leave. this is an example of o’brian’s humor, of course. but it also suggests that joy and wonder can be found anywhere, if you know how to look for them.
complete list of aubrey-maturin novels by patrick o’brian
master and commander (1970)
post captain (1972)
hms surprise (1973)
the mauritius commando (1977)
desolate island (1978)
the fortune of war (1979)
the surgeon’s partner (1980)
the Ionian mission (1981)
See Also: Lynn Austin – Book Series In Order
port of betrayal (1983)
the other side of the world (1984)
the reverse of the medal (1986)
the brand letter (1988)
the thirteen gun salute (1989)
the nutmeg of consolation (1991)
clarissa oakes or true love (1992)
the sea dark as wine (1993)
the commodore (1995)
the yellow admiral (1996)
the hundred days (1998)
blue at the mizzen (1999)
glossary of nautical terms
the gun room on the hms surprise site has a nice glossary of nautical terms that come from the r.h. Dana Jr., author of “Two Years Before the Mast.” These are particularly useful for new readers of the O’Brian series, but useful for everyone. this openstax page on the main parts and sails of 19th century ships is also useful.
nautical terms that have become idiomatic
Idioms are phrases whose “figurative meaning is different from the literal meaning”, as the Oxford Companion to the English language puts it very well. the oed online says that idioms are “a group of words established by usage that have a meaning that cannot be deduced from the individual words (eg, over the moon, see the light)”.
once you start reading patrick o’brian, you start to realize how idioms in english are derived from sailing ships. for example, a “loose cannon” is a wild and unpredictable person who can cause damage. this language comes from the cannons of sailing ships that were mounted on carts with wheels that absorbed recoil and allowed the weapon to be taken out inside the ship to reload it. the guns and their carriages could easily weigh 3,000 pounds and were secured with heavy ropes. when a cannon and its chariot came loose from their ropes, it could roll all over the deck from the motion of the ship, injuring or killing men. worse yet, the gun could fall down a hatch and go straight through the bottom of the hull, causing the ship to quickly sink. the crewseekers website has an excellent list of idioms that come from sailboats.
turn and dress a sailboat
o’brian describes in detail the navigational mechanics of his ships. This video from the Indian star shows what goes into tacking and dressing a sailboat. In both tacking and chocking, the crew steers the boat so that the wind moves from one side of the boat to the other. when turning, the ship’s bow is turned through the wind. when carrying, the stern of the ship is turned. tacking is the most difficult maneuver because the crew turns the boat against the wind, while tacking involves turning the boat downwind.
See Also: Top-15 Books to Read to Become a Millionaire – Headway media