The Aubrey-Maturin books – Patrick O’Brian

Ah, what a treasure trove!
 
The twenty historical seafaring novels by Patrick O’Brian gave me a reading pleasure like no other. Once you’re into this series, you find yourself moving like a clipper at a rate of knots and you cannot stop. The writing is just that good.
 
O’Brian slips you effortlessly into the Napoleonic period, introduces you to Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and before long you might as well have been press-ganged because you won’t be leaving their adventures for many a thousand nautical miles. The admiration one comes to feel for these very different main characters, with their well-defined strengths and deficiencies, is only outdone by their love for each other. Aubrey, the Navy captain, is extravert, adventurous, proud, ambitious, conservative. Maturin, the ship’s doctor and a covert spy, is introvert, reserved, courageous in less advertised ways, liberal. Both are ultimately men of integrity who value learning, delight in conversation, and have an eye open to the main chance. O’Brian is pretty weak on female characterization, so he chose wisely with his very particular ocean-going milieu.
 
He has also picked a certain moment when it was possible for a Navy captain to enjoy a certain autonomy, allowing him to express himself in action, while a voyager might be trying out or finding out the new, whether as ship’s commander, physician, amateur naturalist, or wide-eyed traveller.
 
Starting with Master and Commander, I thought that I would never navigate the dense naval jargon that packs some of O’Brian’s pages. But once I realized that was never going to make heads nor tails of it and that it really didn’t matter, I simply let the language wash over me and found that it added to the atmosphere and authenticity of the narrative. O’Brian is masterful on the detail of life on board ship, because he has the knack of making it complement and help the action along. The dialogue, in exchanges that make the sea sparkle and the rigging sing, is thoroughly believably late 18th century. It has wit, erudition and feeling. The action and adventure are superb.

Give it another two or three years and my fading memory will have forgotten the plots and allow me to enjoy all these books all over again.