So the other day I finally finished reading the Aubrey Maturin series -- which I sometimes refer to the Master and Commander series, because the excellent movie of the same name is cobbled together from a number of the books in the series.
It's been quite an undertaking. The series spans 20 books (plus one very unfinished book which I have not read but probably will at some point just for kicks) and its taken me about six and half years of intermittent reading to get through them all.
For those of you not in the know, the series follows the naval careers of Captain Jack Aubrey and surgeon Stephen Maturin as they fight with the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. These two main characters are very rich and multi-faceted, and their friendship is as much the subject of the books than the trials of being at war upon the raging sea in the age of sail.
On the one hand you have Jack Aubrey, sometimes known as lucky Jack, reknown for his fighting abilities and his...well, luck. A capital seaman, a believer in brisk gunnery, a captain who will push his men to their limits to achieve his mission -- or better yet, to take a prize. But he cares for his men, uses the lash sparingly, and his highest concern (aside from his duty) is to keep a happy ship.
On the other hand you have the surgeon, Stephen Maturin. He is a man of the enlightenment: a scientifically minded surgeon, a physician, who can have your leg off faster than you can say "Excuse me, I think I need more rum for...oh, my leg is gone. Thanks". He has a keen interest in nature (he is called a naturalist but I suppose today he would be considered a biologist) and is forever studying the wildlife in all of the locations that the service takes him. Oh, and another little thing: Stephen Maturin is a British spy. As the novels reach into the teens it is his missions that tend to drive the plot -- Jack Aubrey and his various ships provide the transportation and sometimes the firepower necessary to achieve his covert goals.
They go through a lot together. Even though Lucky Jack enjoys lots of victories, the pair of characters have a few ships sunk out from under them, get shipwrecked a couple times, and I can think of three occasions where they are made prisoners of war. Fortunes are won, lost, won again. At one point Jack is actually drummed out of the service after being unjustly framed in a financial scandal.
The men have deep faults. For all his good fortune at sea lucky Jack has very little on land. On at least one occasion Jack boards his ship to escape from the debtors prison, and when he is in a far away land he is on one or two occasions unfaithful to his wife (who, it must be said, is much beloved). For his part, Stephen struggles with addiction to opiates and cocoa leaves.
Both men love music dearly - indeed, it is at a concert when they first meet, though they nearly fight a duel because Stephen will not stop beating time to the music - and that is one of the things that cements their friendship as they play violin and cello in the master's cabin, late into the night.
Now, lately I have across people who have tried to read some of the books and found them dull. Patrick O'Brian's writing style is not a modern one; I would compare him to a modern day composer writing music in the style of Mozart or Clementi. O'Brian also plies on countless nautical jargon, terms, and idioms; and if modern naval jargon is difficult enough to follow, 19th century naval jargon is especially daunting.
But O'Brian achieves an immersion effect. The words just kind of wash over you and you can still get a picture of at least something happening in your mind. That may not really recommend the series, but what it does do is give the books an authenticity with regards to what life was really like in a well handled ship of war.
The books do have some flaws, of course. The overall story advances into the year 1812 relatively quickly, and as O'Brian decides to write more books he has to sort of suspend the year 1812 from something like books 6 - 18; he is at least good enough to inform readers in one of the introductions that he is going to start doing this. And some of the books are just better than others. It is with a great bit of irony that "The Far Side of the World", which was a great movie, is probably my least favorite of the books.
But to say this series of flaws is much the same as saying that Beethoven's 9th has flaws: It may drag here or there, but overall I think this is a masterwork of a particular kind.
And what am I going to do now that I have finished the series?
Start it over again, of course.
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