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Title: The Far Side of the World (Aubrey-Maturin (Paperback)) by Patrick O'Brian ISBN: 0-393-30862-6 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 April, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.15 (26 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Perhaps the best installment of a superb series.
Comment: Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin voyage to unfamiliar waters, chasing an American frigate around Cape Horn, up the South American coast to the Galapagos and into the South Pacific. The American is laying waste to British whaling, and Aubrey's mission is to stop her.
"The Far Side of the World" of course has O'Brian's signature scholarship, his extraordinary attention to the detail of a square-rigged ship during the Napoleonic Wars, his wit and sense of the absurd, and, best of all, his pulse-racing descriptions of a chase and battle at sea.
What sets this installment a bit above its counterparts is the exhilaration of a chase that winds through two oceans and thousands of miles, and a wonderful scene wherein Aubrey and Maturin are plucked from the drink by a female crew of Polynesian men-haters.
By all means, read this book. (But read all the others in the series first!)
Rating: 5
Summary: Fascinating Twists, Subtle Language
Comment: The tenth volume in O'Brian's wonderfully intelligent nautical series finds Captain Aubrey and Stephen Maturin in Gibraltar, still aboard the Surprise. Their mission is to track an American ship down the Atlantic and on to the largely uncharted Pacific whaling grounds. While "Far Side of the World" contains none of the heart-pounding muzzle-to-muzzle naval battles that readers have come to expect in O'Brian's stories, it contains lots of imaginative plot twists nonetheless. A strange and tragic love triangle, a raft full of primitive lesbians, Maturin's disappointing visit to the Galapagos, and an oddly gripping denouement as the Surprises confront their American nemeses. The book is entirely afloat, with pit stops to refit, but no extended periods ashore with family or engaged in intelligence affairs. Maturin's friendship with Dr. Martin, a naturalist parson, provides comic relief at every turn.
O'Brian never fails to please. This book smoothly picks up where the last one left off, and leaves a thread or two dangling to launch the next volume. As always, the writing is brilliant and spare, the characters complex and developed, and the adventures well-researched, founded in British naval histories. Another great voyage.
Rating: 5
Summary: Another strong addition to a phenomenal series
Comment: Given the existence of the movie MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD, something has to be said initially about that. I would very strongly recommend anyone who has seen the movie and wants to read the novel to resist the temptation to do so. Mainly this is because it is the tenth novel in a series, and the author assumes that you have read the previous nine. If you pick this up and attempt to read it without having read the others, you will be utterly at sea (pun intended). I also do not recommend this novel to viewers of the movie (who don't intend to read the other novels first) because the novel and the movie bear very little resemblence to one another. There is, in fact, almost nothing in common between the two except for the two main characters, the fact that the H.M.S. Surprise is chasing another ship (though American rather than British), they encounter the Gallapagos Islands, and they end up in the Pacific. In other words, there is only the most superficial resemblence between the novel and the movie.
For readers of the series, this is one of the stronger additions to the sequence. Instead of taking the Surprise back to England where she is to be sold or perhaps broken up, Jack is summoned to go out in search of the U.S.S. Norfolk, an American ship sent out to harrass British whaling ships in the Pacific. Although things go well at first, it turns out to be an almost doomed voyage, with one catastrophe after another taking place. None of the misfortunes dooms the mission, but neither do they allow anything to go smoothly. The only thing that saves the mission is that the Norfolk ends up having even less luck than the Surprise.
The key to Patrick O'Brians series is not to focus too very much on any one novel. There is truly a sense in which all the novels together form a single saga. Unlike other series, no single book stands very well alone. In fact, each novel functioned more like a chapter in a very long book than an independent novel. For the reader who plows through all of the novels, this can be immensely satisfying, like reading the longest novel ever written. I'm a little surprised that the publishers didn't contest O'Brian's strategy (or perhaps they did but he successfully resisted). Most publishers prefer series that can be entered at any point in the sequence, but with the Aubrey-Maturin books you need to start at the beginning or not at all.
While I do not recommend neophytes beginning with this series, I do heartily commend the whole group of books. This is not merely the finest set of historical novels ever written, as has often been noted by literary critics and reviewers: it is arguably the finest long series of novels of any genre of the past hundred years. It has the potential to appeal to a remarkable range of people, whether fans of great literature, those engaged in sailing, those who enjoy first rate historical fiction, or those who like sea faring adventure. It is a sequence that can truly be many things to many people, and yet manage to satisfy all.
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Title: The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick O'Brian ISBN: 0393309606 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 August, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Ionian Mission (Aubrey-Maturin (Paperback)) by Patrick O'Brian ISBN: 0393308219 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 November, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian ISBN: 0393308200 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 January, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Letter of Marque by Patrick O'Brian ISBN: 0393309053 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 August, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Fortune of War by Patrick O'Brian ISBN: 0393308138 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 August, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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