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Excellent high-sea adventure	Customer Rating:
I was expecting an exciting adventure on the high seas. This book delivers that, as well as well-drawn, nuanced characters, sly wit, and tremendously detailed and thoroughly researched descriptions of life at sea in the Napoleonic Wars. Rarely do I return to a book once I've read it, but I've revisited these novels again and again, and they never fail to entertain me.

Dreadfully boring

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I am a voracious reader of novels, history books and so on and I bought this book after seeing several people reading it on a train. This was about five or six years ago when it must have been in vogue. I didn't have time to read it at first and I recently had a go at it. I have battled my way through huge novels by authors such as Dickens, Trollope, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Manzoni, Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, Henry James and Victor Hugo as well as many great philosophical works and have read thick textbooks on many dry subjects such as economics, law, mathematics and physics. I hate to not finish anything once I start reading it but I found this book to be excruciatingly boring. There was no exciting drama to entertain one, no intriguing characters and I frankly couldn't see what all the fuss was about. This book also fell between the two stools of being a bit more pretentious than a genre novel but not a literary novel either. It didn't seem to me to have the entertainment value of a popular novel by e.g. Ken Follett, Wilbur Smith, John Grisham and so on but it wasn't as deep as a novel by e.g. James Joyce, Graham Swift, Iris Murdoch (who supposedly supported O'Brien in gaining literary recognition), Samuel Becket, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, George Orwell, Peter Carey and so on. Definitely not one for me. This was one of the few novels that I have ever stopped reading part way through and I only got up to about chapter four or five before packing it in. When I was eight I stopped reading 'The Hobbit' after two chapters due to complete boredom and I am now forty eight and I have rarely stopped reading another book only part of the way through since that time. I have even managed to get into Tolkein's writings since then too. Believe me, this book was absolutely dreadful, I'm afraid.

Unship the stuns'l boom iron and touch up the ends of the stop-cleats, Mr Lamb

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Based on reputation I assumed that the Aubrey-Maturin series would be just another swashbuckling Hornblower pastiche. In fact, Master and Commander, the first in the series (unlike Hornblower they are in chronological order), is something totally different. The enterprising Jack Aubrey captains the sloop of war Sophie as she voyages around the Mediterranean and encounters numerous skirmishes with enemy ships during the Napoleonic Wars. His deep friendship with his surgeon, nature-loving Irish-Catalan Stephen Maturin, is the central theme of the book and presumably continues throughout the series. There are subplots, one involving the ambiguous relationship between Aubrey and his first lieutenant, a man he admires but about whom he is suspicious because of his Irish Catholic background, a perceived threat in the RN at that time and one that occurs throughout the book. In a man's world, drunkenness and indiscipline remain a constant concern and the author does not duck from the brutal reality of the carnage that ensues during close-range exchanges. An altogether more literary work than C S Forester's with a forbidding quantity of nautical and period detail, Master and Commander is dense, somewhat disjointed and quite a challenging read for the uninitiated. I must say that Hornblower is popular adventure accessible to all, but Aubrey-Maturin is authentic history more likely to appeal to those with an interest in that era rather than to a general readership. That said, it is historical fiction at its best.

Which they are some of the best books ever written!

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There is so much to praise in these wonderful books that it's probably best to start with assurances to the contrary of what might be potential readers' less favourable impressions and expectations. So, if you care about great literature but were hesitating about these - don't, I urge you. First, you emphatically don't have to be some military history or naval warfare fan to appreciate O'Brian. (Like me, though, you may end up an admirer of Nelson or a visitor to Victory, purely on the strength of these great books.) Second: have no fears of impenetrable maritime jargon - once again, everything is understandable and engaging purely from context and rhythm (although, once more, you may actually find yourself wanting to hone your facility to distinguish a topgallant from a studdingsail as your acquaintance with Jack Aubrey deepens). The brilliant device of having Maturin (one of literature's sharpest, most caustic characters) "ignorant" of his friend Jack's oceanic terms gives us all an enjoyable - and often hilarious - entry to the vocabulary. Third (and most significant): have no qualms about the "antique" element. Yes, O'Brian seems, at times, to be writing with the benefit of a time-machine, so authentic are his terms of reference. But the underlying sensibility here is human, intimate and deeply affectionate; indeed, Jack's and Stephen's relationship over time constitutes one of the best love stories ever written. It all comes across as fresh, immediate and modern. Also, I can't emphasise sufficiently how much humour there is here; and please rest assured that this is not the genteel "Don't y'know" school of polite chuckles but the "Full Blackadder" when it comes to sarcasm, slapstick and a Comedy of Manners that cheerfully blends Swift and Spike Milligan. Stephen's witty ribbing of Jack and others is nicely counterbalanced by his own pratfalls and duckings; Jack's sense of his own (hopeless) hilarity is a beautifully sustained study in loveable self-delusion. Against that runs the constant theme of incredible (and realistic) violence. Again, the astounding bravery and hideous bloodletting both adds to the realistic, contemporary texture and counterbalances, in its own way, the glorious comedy of these tales. Jack the "flat" who can never get a witticism out on time is a man who can, when necessary, bring down several opponents at once; whilst Stephen, the tetchy, cutting cove with his head in some Latin or his scalpel in a specimen, can do sudden, fatal violence when cornered - and, only moments later, undercut Jack or some other blusterer with a few incisive remarks. Dazzling. O'Brian's way with action, as with his dialogue, is vivid, cinematic, oscillating between suggestion and the explicit. He also does fast-cutting worthy of the Bourne films. Here's just a little bit from HMS Surprise, when Jack sets out to rescue Stephen from torture: The bubbling shriek rose again, huge, beyond human measure, intolerable. Inside the room the strikingly handsome youth had turned and now he was looking up with a triumphant smile at the other officers. His coat and his collar were open, and he had something in his hand. Jack drew his sword, opened the long window; their faces turned, indignant, then shocked, amazed. Three long strides, and balancing, with a furious grip on his hilt, he cut forehand at the boy and backhand at the man next to him. Instantly the room was filled - bellowing noise, rushing movement, blows, the thud of bodies, a shout from the last officer, chair and table crashing down, the black civilian with two seamen on top of him, a smothered scream. The soldier shooting out of the door, an animal cry beyond it; and silence. The demented, inhuman face of the man on the rack, running with sweat. The riches do not end there, of course. Maturin's natural philosophy alone is worth the admission; especially when it irritates Jack and gets in the way of the prize-cruising. There is a fabulous bit in HMS Surprise when Stephen brings aboard a creature ("comforting it in Portuguese" as he carries it) that Jack assumes to be one of the "vampires" he has forbidden Stephen to collect. It turns out to be a sloth; which all the sailors love and adopt - but which also has a phobia of Jack's face. Jack eventually persuades the sloth to come to him by offering it alcohol, much to Maturin's chagrin when he discovers the animal drunk ("Jack, you have debauched my sloth!"). The tales also feature badgers, horses, dogs, tortoises - a menagerie worthy of T H White, indeed. Finally, these books are, of course, unspeakably romantic. The exotic landscapes and characters, the espionage, the food, the bawdiness, the danger: enough for anyone's escapist appetite. But a special mention must go to the use of music; not just the duets that Stephen and Jack so charmingly share, often at night in the great cabin; but also the choruses in which the whole ship often unties (notably, in Treason's Harbour, a chorus of "Ladies of Spain" joined with gusto by a colourful native character - who is hideously taken by sharks a few chapters later: well, I said O'Brian was cinematic). There is so much to say about these glorious books; but it's all far better said by the author himself in the books themselves. Once again, I urge you to read them. You might want to try, say, HMS Surprise, as a good self-contained way in, to see if you like it. But, honestly; I can't imagine anyone not wanting to go through the whole sequence; as I've now done; twice. The thing is, the whole sequence of the novels is even greater than the sum of its parts. O'Brian really is that good. Individually, all of the Aubrey/Maturin stories work as great novels. Any one of at least four - and probably more - of them (certainly, Master and Commander, HMS Surprise, The Ionian Mission and Treason's Harbour) could stand amongst literature's finest. (My own Top Three Desert Island Booklist would put an "equals" sign after Earthly Powers, The Sword in the Stone and HMS Surprise.)

Slow Start of Series, Brilliant Set of Books	Customer Rating:
Simple really, am on book 14. Brilliant set of books, buy them and read them.