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Title: The Hundred Days (Aubrey-Maturin (Audio)) by Patrick O'Brian, Robert Hardy ISBN: 0-375-40521-6 Publisher: Random House Audio Publishing Group Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 2 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.29 (52 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: After nineteen brilliant books -- you're complaining?
Comment: I usually wouldn't bother writing a review of O'Brian's work -- enough people have had great things to say about him. O'Brian is the finest storyteller alive. His books combine a very rare mix of high literary skill and adventure. He has been compared to Forster, Austen and Dickens, accurately and favorably. He can also be compared to Tolkien, Tolstoy and Homer. He is that good. Look at his fans: military history buffs, history buffs, fans of adventure fiction, those who look for great literature -- and those who enjoy a well told story. Some of the negative reviews of his latest book have prompted me to write in response -- I'm sorry you are disappointed. I agree that this may be the weakest book in the series. I agree the deaths of Diana and Bonden are jarring. And I think some of you are missing the point. This is a series. O'Brian doesn't have to tie up everything (including the grieving of his main characters) in this book. And another thing to remember -- he is writing of another time. Some of the most shocking, provocative, and fascinating moments in the books come when O'Brian is speculating about the differences in the different attitudes of this time. Human life, and the end of it, is viewed very differently. Aubrey regrets the death of Bondon, but he has a whole crew to worry about (and consider the irony of Bonden's death -- he's killed by a stray shot just before the war ends -- did O'Brian have to elaborate further). And I would gladly trade a defeated mourning Stephen Maturin for the character O'Brian gave us -- a Maturin who throws himself into action to deal with his grief. And I was terribly saddened by his sudden memory of Diana's blue diamond, his sudden feeling of life's emptiness, and or being told that Diana was buried wearing the Blue Peter. Her death was more startling in that single moment then pages and pages of funery rights would have been. One of O'Brian's greatest skills is knowing what to leave out. I know much of the griping is from disappointed fans -- but please give the man a break -- and give him some credit for taking risks -- even near the end of this series.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the best of the series, but challenging
Comment: Scanning through the other customer reviews of "The Hundred Days", I am struck by the chasm between those who condemn the book (sometimes in startlingly harsh terms) and those who applaud it. I count myself firmly among the latter, but acknowledge that this volume differs significantly from earlier entries in the series. What some readers apparently view as an absence of skill and spirit on O'Brian's part, I find instead to be the product of a subtle and masterful command of the literary art. Death is a central theme, Death is a chief character of "The Hundred Days", and I find it not surprising at all that O'Brian has elected to use a style in keeping with that particular focus. I have seen numerous comments from dissatisfied readers decrying O'Brian's "failure" to deal with the deaths of major characters at length. With all due respect, I think that view misses the whole point of what and how O'Brian has written. The cheapest, most false piece of writing produced by any hack would have lavished sorrow upon these deaths; shedding shallow tears would have been the easy thing to do. The abruptness of these deaths, even the absence of healing mourning, heightens the pain and the sense of loss we feel. O'Brian has not written a book to make us "feel good". Instead he has painted for us a portrait of emotional constraint, the hues of the world washed over with the grey of an unexpressed grief. Only at rare moments are we pernitted to see the black gulf beneath Stephen's determined insistence to continue on after Diana's death. He is a man who is hiding even -- or, especially -- from himself the depth of his loss, while we see that grief has dulled his usual acuity. O'Brian has not tried to "entertain" us here, and those seeking light diversion would do better to look elsewhere. No, "The Hundred Days" is not an easy book, but it evidences an undiminished literary skill. I believe this novel to be O'Brian's finest writing in several years. Long after finishing it, "The Hundred Days" haunts me.
Rating: 5
Summary: Aubrey and Maturin After Napoleon One Last Time
Comment: Patrick O'Brian shows he has not lost his gifts for writing an elegant maritime thriller in this second to last installment of the Aubrey-Maturin saga. It's 1815 and Napoleon has escaped from the Italian island of Elba, seizing power once more in Paris. Commodore Aubrey is sent with a small squadron of frigates and corvettes to the Adriatic coast to stop French warships sympathetic to Napoleon's cause from joining the newly recreated Imperial French Navy. After a successful completion of this mission, Aubrey and Maturin find themselves off the coast of North Africa, in search of a Moslem Arab ruler sympathetic to Napoleon and the gold treasure he is sending to Napoleon's forces. Without question, this is one of the most exciting installments in the Aubrey-Maturin saga, replete with unexpected encounters and other suprises in store for the reader, such as reunions with several long-lost friends and the tragic, unexpected loss of one of their followers.
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Title: Treason's Harbour by Patrick O'Brian ISBN: 0393308634 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Ionian Mission by Patrick O'Brian ISBN: 0393308219 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 1992 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: January, 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: August, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Far Side of the World by Patrick O'Brian ISBN: 0393308626 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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