Patrick O'Brian
Paperback | Pages: 379 pages Rating: 4.42 | 14964 Users | 626 Reviews
Mention Books During H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3)
| Original Title: | H.M.S. Surprise |
| ISBN: | 0393307611 (ISBN13: 9780393307610) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Aubrey & Maturin #3 |
| Characters: | Jack Aubrey, Stephen Maturin |
Description To Books H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3)
My favorite of the first three novels and perhaps of the entire series! HMS Surprise deftly combines the best aspects of the first two books. Love, friendship and war. Frankly, there's so much going on it's hard to believe O'Brian fits it all in comfortably! The amazing thing about this book is how it takes you on a ride around the world, touching base in England, the Mediterranean, Africa, South America, India and the South Pacific islands. All of this lush scenery is a joy to behold in O'Brian's capable hands. So much of it describes the natural world that reading HMS Surprise is often like watching an episode of Plant Earth. This epic series set during the Napoleonic Wars, ostensibly written with Captain Jack Aubrey as the solo heroic figure, can no longer pretend to be anything but a duet. Aubrey's friend, sometimes surgeon and sometimes (view spoiler)[spy (hide spoiler)], Stephen Maturin really comes into his own in HMS Surprise, which includes one of the saddest, most touching scenes, not to mention others both harrowing and heroic. Torture and duels, written with a touch of Impressionism that needs your attention, thrust and parry through out the book in a way that makes you wonder if O'Brian wrote it just to see how much one man can plausibly endure. O'Brian is knocked on for providing too much information about naval matters, but here he puts it to poignant use. Around page 50 Aubrey is writing to his beloved Sophie back home. Much of what we know today about life at sea and warfare during this period (early 1800s) is what's made available to us through just such letters. They are often vague, elusive or downright bland when it comes to the description of battles. Certainly they could've described the gore and extreme peril the sailors put themselves in, but why worry and expose loved ones to the horrors they might otherwise remain blissfully unaware of? Aubrey pauses in the midst of his chatty letter and reflects upon one of his recent and particularly violent battles - oddly inhuman in it's unusually calm, calculated butchery. Forcing our eyes open Clockwork Orange-style , O'Brian shows a scene few have or should see, and then has Aubrey continue on with his letter, dashing off a colorless, dispassionate summary line about the fight that his loved one might readied swallow none the wiser. So you get the scene and the subterfuge all in one brilliant bit of real life in a fiction full of truths. My review of book two, Post Captain: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... My review of book four, The Mauritius Command: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...List Regarding Books H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3)
| Title | : | H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3) |
| Author | : | Patrick O'Brian |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 379 pages |
| Published | : | May 17th 1991 by W.W. Norton (first published 1973) |
| Categories | : | Historical. Historical Fiction. Fiction. Adventure. War. Audiobook. Military Fiction |
Rating Regarding Books H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3)
Ratings: 4.42 From 14964 Users | 626 ReviewsWrite-Up Regarding Books H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3)
Audiobook. Patrick Tull ably narrates another volume of the maritime adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey of the British Navy and his friend, naturalist/physician/spy Stephen Maturin. I was very surprised to read a review that recommended skipping the first four volumes of this long series. I dont agree, partly because Id like this series even longer than it is, and partly because the first four volumes include some of my favorite parts of the story. How can one understand the recurring character,In praising Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books I am on well-trodden ground. In a sense, it is superfluous to do so: so many people, of such varied and excellent taste, have praised these books to the skies that further lauds from the modest likes of me are hardly necessary. Still, I'm glad to add my words. These stories concern Jack Aubrey, a ship captain in the English Navy at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, and his great friend Stephen Maturin, an Irish-Catalan doctor and spy who in the
I loved this book. The development of the two central characters, and their trials and tribulations in matters of both love and war, are as convincing as the world in which they live. The descriptions of naval battles, especially the one towards the end of the book, are terrific, edge-of-the-seat reading. I think I read somewhere that O'Brian based at least some of the battles on real ones fought during the Napoleonic wars, and they are extraordinarily vivid. They are three-dimensional and have
Thus to the Eastern wealth through storms we go;But now, the Cape once doubled, fear no more:A constant trade-wind will securely blow,And gently lay us on the spicy shore. HMS Surprise is the name of the latest command of Captain Jack Aubrey, a frigate with a ragtag crew sent on a solitary mission to the Indian Ocean. The book debuts with a messy affair involving Doctor Aubrey Maturin who is betrayed by his own side and tortured by the French in Minorca and the ususal financial troubles for
I'm not going to add all twenty O'Brians here, because I don't really have individual reviews for them. . . . All twenty just stand in my mind as one long reading experience of near-unalloyed pleasure. But H.M.S. SURPRISE was an especial favorite among those twenty, featuring Jack's first journey on the Surprise, Stephen's first (?) major betrayal by Diana, a duel, and of course the debauched sloth.
The opening scene of "HMS Surprise" which pits the venerable spymaster Sir Joseph Blain against the incompetent new First Lord of the admiralty and a cohort of greedy, politicking officials is a study in what makes Patrick O'Brian perhaps the greatest genre novelist of all time and one of the premiere prose stylists of the 20th century.With an economy and subtlety that are dazzling, he is able to lay bare the souls of both institutions and individuals in a way that reveals how intricately the
I like listening to this book better than reading it, I think. This one is steeped in the emotional lives of Jack and Stephen. It's the first that really starts showing us how deeply these men feel about each other and the others they care about, and hearing it rather than reading it adds a level of intimacy that increases the novel's emotional satisfaction. It opens with Stephen's torture at the hands of the French, and Jack's daring rescue. Captain Jack cares for his wounded friend with a
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