Patrick O'Brian's Aubry/Maturin Series

[Etcher]

Does anyone have favourite novels from the series? I’ve only read the first two.

[grsjax]

They  are all good.  I found it best to read them in sequence.  Although each novel is a complete story reading them in sequence makes them more understandable.  Look at it not as 20 different books but one book 6000 pages long.

[Etcher]

Oh yeah, I intend to read them in order. I just wondered what seasoned readers thought were the high points of the series.

[Srodbro]

I am into my fourth circumnavigation of the series. My opinions of each book seem to change with each trip. Right now, I’d rank them as follows:

 

First:  Master and Commander. Just can’t beat that first meeting in the music room, and the initial development of the primary characters. Holmes and Watson, Quixote and Sancho “ ain’t in it”. Also, immerses us into that long gone world, gently, without insulting our intelligence, in fact subtly challenging it. 

Second: Post Captain. Introduction of the next two most influential characters, Sophie Williams and Diana. And, reminds us that the two heroes have a life ashore as well with a set of desires and aspirations  which affect them as much as the one at sea. 

Third:  HMS Surprise:  Introduction of the next most important character:  Surprise. IMHO Surprise is more than a vehicle to carry the heroes to their adventures and back, but is a character in her own right, with whom other characters, and readers, become emotionally attached to. 
 

While it is hard to separate the first three, the next kinda stand alone. 

Fourth:  The Commodore ( 17th book). I think this book ended the development of all the major characters, tied up all the loose ends with the deep, dark force that was nagging Jack and Stephen’s fortunes, and leaves the way open for Jack to get his flag … which everyone knows is going to eventually happen.  I think it might have been intended by O’Brian to be his last. It would be interesting to know what was going on in POB’s life at the time he wrote it. It ends with the perfect line:  “ Stephen, you must never go to sea again.”  Also, the books that follow either don’t mention many of our familiar shipmates, or ends them in ( to me) an unsatisfactory manner, to no purpose. 
 

But, I am coming up again to the last several novels, and could change my mind. 

[grsjax]

Another good series are the Richard Delancy novels by C. Northcote Parkinson.  His other books are great reads as well.

[Srodbro]

SHIFTING TOPMASTS

In Chapter Eight of Truelove, notorious landlubber Dr. Maturin describes to another landlubber the process they are observing of shifting topmasts. As I am, myself, a landlubber, I googled several references to learn what this process entails. It’s a lot of work.

But, Maturin says:

The old Surprise, with a crew that had been together a great while, all men-of-war’s men, was extraordinarily good at it; and I remember that once, in the West Indies, shifting topmasts at the same moment as the Hussar, considered a crack ship, she did so in one hour and twenty-three minutes,

 

 Now, it isn’t quite clear whether Maturin is recalling the time for one mast or all three, but either way, that seems a very short time for the effort involved. 
 

What do you think?