One of the most entertaining entries into the entire series

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	• The Nutmeg of Consolation Patrick O'Brian W. W. Norton & Company, 1993 average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Aubrey and Maturin escape shipwreck and head to Australia

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels continue to defy convention. In form and structure, the novels really aren't separate stories, but instead consist of separate episodes within a much larger narrative. While with most series of novels, the author builds each novel as a self-contained narrative, with each story building to its own particular climax. Not so with these novels, which often end on a point of minor transition but hardly the high point of the novel.

"The Nutmeg of Consolation" continues in this line. At the end of the last novel, "The Thirteen Gun Salute," Aubrey, Maturin, and the crew had been stranded on a proverbial desert island, populated only by pigs, ring-tailed monkeys, and birds. "Nutmeg," fittingly enough, opens with a game of cricket as if no time had passed from one novel to the next. The "first act" of "Nutmeg" sees the most action in the novel, as Aubrey's crew comes under attack by a numerically superior force of savages (O'Brian is hardly politically correct), led by a fierce warrior-queen. O'Brian writes thrilling battle scenes, and this is no exception.

Eventually Aubrey and Maturin return to civilization. In dire need of a ship are able to locate the titular Nutmeg of Consolation, a small Dutch ship that in physical appearance would be a mere sloop, but thanks to Aubrey's status as post-captain the Nutmeg qualifies as a frigate. Desperate to halt French progress in the area and eager to prove that the British rule the seas, Aubrey takes the Nutmeg out in pursuit of a much larger French ship. In a chase that spans for hundreds of miles, O'Brian gets plenty of opportunity to capture the daily life aboard ship as only he can.

This episode then gives way - after a joyous reunion with Tom Pullings - to a trip to Australia and Botany Bay. Here Maturin is able to indulge his whims as a naturalist, but not after getting himself and his crew into hot water with the local army forces by thrashing an army man in a duel. Aubrey features less prominently in this portion of the novel, thanks in large part to his taking of a double-dose of physic without Maturin's approval, and ending up much the worse for wear as a result.

"Nutmeg" is a wonderful book because the journeys and adventures develop at a slow pace. O'Brian allows himself the luxury of capturing the various details of 19th-century life in great detail, in all their humor and sadness. A throw-away tale about an encounter with polar bears is one of the most moving passages in all of O'Brian's works, and his description of Maturin's unfortunate encounter with a platypus is a wonder.

All that is to the good, but I must confess that I was a little hungry for more action by the end of the novel. This probably reflects more on me than on the book, but I look forward to return to a little more cannonfire and broadswords in the coming novels. But to be fair, this four-star rating would probably be a five-star if it had been written by somebody other than O'Brian - he has just set his personal bar so high.

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great series

I love this series, I can't stop reading them. Well written, and descriptive, they really take you to a different world.

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great series of books

If you are interested in sailing, British naval history, or the high seas... then this is a great historical fiction series. The single movie doesn't really do justice to this excellent series of novels.

One of the most entertaining entries into the entire series

Although THE THIRTEEN GUN SALUTE was one of the least eventful books in the entire Aubrey-Maturin series, THE NUTMEG OF CONSOLATION is one of the most action filled. The books in the series are not, in the end, really about action, but it nonetheless can be a lot of fun when it takes place. The major incident in the previous novel had been the wrecking of the Diane on uncharted rocks near a remote island and the start of this one has the surviving crew members working hard to build a smaller vessel out of the remains of the Diane to sail to the nearest port. Instead, they find themselves under attack by pirates, led by a memorable female who briefly and seemingly befriends Maturin. Later, after being rescued by a Chinaman who comes to the island looking for the makings of birds nest soup, Jack and his crew take charge of the refitting of a Dutch vessel that had been sunk and salvaged that Jack renames The Nutmeg of Consolation. After a long chase of a French privateer and the reuniting with the Surprise, the rest of the novel focuses on a trip to Botany Bay, the novel ending suddenly after a near fatal encounter by Stephen with a male duckbilled platypus. All in all, it is an exceptionally satisfying novel, the only possible complaint that there is little time for the political or interpersonal interplay so fascinating in the other novels. Also, O'Brian, who delights in being not only a first-rate storyteller but a teacher and instructor, gets to do less of the latter here. Still, I can't imagine anyone failing to be thoroughly entertained by this fine novel.

Some reviewers complain that at this point in the series, it is beginning to get a little tired. I do not experience that, though I can acknowledge that the series here begins to struggle against the limitations that were set for it by O'Brian's having set it so late in the Napoleonic wars. O'Brian acknowledges in the preface to the series as a whole that he probably make an error by having Jack become a captain and commander at around the mid-point of the Napoleonic era. As a result, when the series was doing so well and the demand for additional books so great, he was sometimes hard pressed to come up with new twists. Also, the chronology ceases at some point to make much sense. Voyages that would actually take two years must, so that more stories can take place before the end of the Napoleonic wars, effectively take up no more than a few months. As a fan of the series, I am more than willing to suspend my disbelief in order to have a few more stories than ought to be possible squeezed it. It is, in the end, one of the few concessions that any reader has to make to the series, but it is a concession in a good cause.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Shipwrecked on a remote island, Captain Jack Aubrey and the crew of the Diane fashion a schooner from the wreck, only to have their makeshift vessel burned in an attack by Malay pirates. Their escape from this predicament is one that only the ingenuity of Patrick O?Brian?or Stephen Maturin?could devise. The dreadful penal colony in New South Wales, harrowingly described, is the backdrop to a diplomatic crisis provoked by Maturin?s Irish temper and to a near-fatal encounter with the wildlife of the Australian outback.

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