Sterling addition to series - diplomacy in Indonesia!

books:


	• The Thirteen-Gun Salute Patrick O'Brian W. W. Norton & Company, 1992 - 319 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Thirteen Gun Salute

Patrick O'Brian is un-matchable when it comes to historical novels on the British Navy & sailing ships during the early 1800's. With help using "Dean King's" two books, "A Sea of Words", and "Harbors and High Seas", the twenty "Master and Commander" series of novels by Patrick O'Brian can be read over many times, and each time will give you aditional pleasure & insight into the days of "Wooden Ships & Iron Men"! (An ex- Merchant Seaman)

Patrick O'Brian series

This is an excellent book in an excellent series. Anyone who likes historical fiction will enjoy this.

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Sterling addition to series - diplomacy in Indonesia!

Perhaps I grow jaded, but Patrick O'Brian kept me at a distance with "The Thirteen-Gun Salute." As a result, despite the thrilling sights and wonderful writing, I cannot give my heart to this novel as I have with so many of his other Aubrey-Maturin novels.

That's not because O'Brian did not offer his usual delightful plot or dozens (if not hundreds) of perfectly-written passages. Captain "Lucky Jack" Aubrey is reinstated to the Royal Navy after his recent heroics and well-deserved good fortune. Dr. Stephen Maturin continues to serve both as Aubrey's ship-surgeon and resident spy - his recently-acquired wealth has done nothing to stifle his roaming spirit. And this novel sees the pair off to modern-day Indonesia to negotiate a critical treaty with a local potentate before Napoleon does so.

"The Thirteen Gun Salute" is long on sailing and diplomacy, short on broadsides and carronades. This is not a criticism - some of my favorite books in this series focus on Maturin and the exotic joys of life at sea rather than O'Brian's admittedly wonderful battle scenes. Indeed, my favorite section of this book involves Maturin's infamous journey to a Buddhist monastary deep inside a dormant volcano, accompanied by a tame orangutan.

But there was one element in this novel that I found to be deeply unsatisfying. Many of Aubrey's and Maturin's troubles lie at the foot of two traitors to the Crown, and they feature in this novel. (Don't worry - no spoilers here, and you should stay away from them on this page.) And yet O'Brian denies us much in the way of direct confrontation between them. I am familiar with O'Brian's love for oblique references and subtle points (indeed, I adore them), but this was a situation that demanded a well-aired comeuppance and reckoning. O'Brian has dedicated more words to describing a comic cricket match than he gives this situation, and as an editor I would have recommended a revisiting of this element.

Nothing in this review should imply that this is an inferior work. O'Brian's prose sings as ever - a climactic hurricane/typhoon is described in riveting style, and there are several key moments of both humor and acute observations of man in the 19th century.

I guess I was just a little disappointed to get jilted after a build-up over successive novels. Oh, well. Here's to book 14!

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Reading Patrick O'Brian makes you smarter.

I'm a true Patrick O'Brian fan. I buy his books three or four at a time. I have not been so captivated by a series of books ever since I read "Dune". Surly sadness will come to my day when there is no more for me to read. Patrick O'Brian can make two ships in a chase at no more than 11Mph at the most keep you on the edge of your seat, then in this book take you to the crater of an instinct volcano to a Buddhist monastery to spend time with an Orangutan, and you can smell every flower and hear the breeze in the trees. As always reading Patrick O'Brian makes you smarter.

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Jack and Stephen enjoy another remarkable adventure

I absolutely adore this series, but in some dissent from my fellow Aubrey-Maturin fans I find this to be one of the least interesting books in the series, though it has one of the most compelling endings in that leaves the crew of the Diane stranded on a deserted island in the South Pacific. Until that shocking and unresolved event, I found that the novel had less of interest than nearly any other in the series. Though the visit to Pulo Prabang was interesting, it contained (except for the visit to the ruins of a Hindu Temple) less of the compelling historical detail that characterized the other books. In previous volumes, the places that Jack and Stephen visit come alive in an almost tangible manner. Here one gets little sense of what Pulo Prabang (apart from the temple) looked or felt like. The other thing that makes his books so marvelous are the magnificent character studies. This one eventually makes good on this feature of the series, but only towards the very end, as the weirdness of Fox's personality comes out. But there is far less of the complex interpersonal interplay that enlivens the other books. Finally, until the shipwreck at the end, there is simply very little excitement in this one. Compared to the previous books, I find that this one simply does not stand out.

Not that it is not still an utter delight and completely satisfying for fans of the series. The aforementioned visit by Stephen to the ruins of a Hindu temple, in the company of an orangutan, is one of the most remarkable moments in the entire series. The shipwreck at the end is as marvelously told as it is shocking to read (one simply cannot credit that the Diane enjoyed such a short lifespan). Also, there is a deep sense of satisfaction when Ledward and Wray, the villains through most of the sequence, finally get theirs, and the manner in which their bodies are disposed is quite shocking. Nonetheless, these were for me moments that reminded me of how consistently I found most of the previous books, instead of how intermittently interesting I found this one.

Interestingly, this is one of the few novels in the series in which the title of the subsequent novels is mentioned. I remember when I first read these books and how little sense I could make of the titles. In many of them the phrase that provides the title can occur well towards the end, such as THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL. But here in THE THIRTEEN-GUN SALUTE (which itself is one of the more ironical in the series, referring to Fox's rather pathetic sense of self importance) the phrase "the nutmeg of consolation" appears, which provides the title for the next novel.

One virtue O'Brian possesses as a writer (among many virtues) is that of understatement. In a genre in which the tendency is to lay things on a bit thick, O'Brian if any thing leaves things deliciously thin. There is no better instance of this than in the fate of Ledward and Wray. Nowhere does O'Brian explicitly explain what happened to them, but instead leaves us to surmise that they were shot by Fox. It is an easy conclusion to make, given Fox's constant target practice in the novel and the statement by Maturin that they were killed by rifle shot (Stephen prefers the pistol). This restraint is one of the things that make his writing so immensely satisfying.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

The 13th installment in the Aubrey/Maturin series.

Captain Jack Aubrey sets sail for the South China Sea with a new lease on life. Following his dismissal from the Royal Navy (on a false accusation), he has earned reinstatement through his daring exploits as a privateer, brilliantly chronicled in The Letter of Marque. Now he is to shepherd Stephen Maturin?his friend, ship?s surgeon and sometimes intelligence agent?on a diplomatic mission to prevent between Bonaparte and the Malay princes which would put English merchant shipping at risk.

The journey of the Diane encompasses a great and satisfying diversity of adventures. Maturin climbs the Thousand Steps of the sacred crater of the orangutans; a killer typhoon catches Aubrey and his crew trying to work the Diane off a reef; and in the barbaric court of Pulo Prabang a classic duel of intelligence agents unfolds: the French envoys, well entrenched in the Sultan?s good graces, against the savage cunning of Stephen Maturin.

?O?Brian infuses his novels with so much energy, texture and drollery that it?s easy to be swept along for the voyage. Add to this the superb reading of actor Tim Pigott-Smith and you have something approaching audiobook heaven.?
---The Express-Times

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