After several years of returning to this series periodically, I'm now in the home stretch of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin tales. This is the sixteenth entry and the quality has not declined at all. In fact, The Wine-Dark Sea was one of the more interesting reads in this latter part of the long-running series.We begin with Captain Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon and British intelligence agent Stephen Maturin aboard their privateer, the Surprise in the southern Pacific. They are pursuing an American privateer through the Great South Sea when things start to get weird. The sea turns a purple-red color and Aubrey notes that the sea "twitches" periodically. Even so experienced a seaman as Aubrey has never seen anything like it. In the midst of the chase, the sea suddenly explodes about them, hurling debris into the air. It is an undersea volcano, and the rocks and other debris that are being sent into the air rain down on both ships, damaging them, injuring and killing sailors, and filling the sea with dead animals. When the explosions finally cease, Aubrey sees a new cone-shaped island having been formed by the volcano's eruption.They are able to take the American privateer as a prize and they spend time repairing both ships as best they can. Then they continue on their way to Peru, where Maturin, in his guise as intelligence agent, will be attempting to foment a revolution to overthrow the current government. His efforts meet with initial success, but then he is betrayed by a man who was on the American privateer (possibly its owner) and who had escaped into Lima. His betrayal puts Stephen in peril. Forewarned, he is able to flee, with the aid of friends who are descendants of the Incas, through the high, frozen wastes of the Andes, having sent word to Aubrey by Aubrey's illegitimate black son, Sam, who is a priest in Peru, that he will try to meet the Surprise in Valparaiso on the last day of the next month.Actually, my favorite parts of the book were the descriptions of the volcanic eruption and its aftermath and of Stephen's time in Peru and the trip through the Andes. The description of the flora, fauna, geology, archaeology, and weather of the Andes was particularly fascinating to me. I may not be able to tell a studdingsail from a mizzenmast, but I can easily imagine the flight of an Andean Condor or the differences between guanacos, llamas, and vicunas, or the bromeliads of the high mountains, and the cleverness of the Incan engineers who made the roads through those mountains and designed the "Inca chair" which carried Stephen on the last part of his journey after he lost two toes to frostbite.Even when Maturin makes his rendezvous with the Surprise and is reunited with his friends, the adventure is far from over. They will endure a breathtaking chase with American ships through stormy seas and icebergs south of Cape Horn, when the Surprise, hoping to capture more American prizes, suddenly finds itself outgunned and outmanned and must run for its life. Having survived that test by the skin of their teeth, losing masts and sails and their rudder(!) in the process, they finally encounter aid in the form of a British ship captained by an old friend, and, thus, are able to say that they are truly "homeward bound" after their years-long voyage. This book made me even more eager to read the last few entries in the series. I hope to finish it by the end of this year.
Somewhere in here I've got a boilerplate review of the Aubrey/Maturin adventures, where I made the point that it seems as unfair—and certainly pointless—to discuss the particulars of anyone book in the series as it would be to rate individual chapters in a novel. This book, then, is really Chapter 16 in a 20-chapter, 5000-page, epic that takes out two heroes and a cast of supporting characters to every corner of the globe, blasting away at the dastardly French, crossing swords with pirates, pressing sail and running out the cannons in fleet actions, weathering sail-rending storms, triple-crossing double-crossing Spanish secret agents, fomenting revolutions on far-away continents, languishing in foreign prisons and, most dauntingly of all, running the gauntlet of the distaff sex ashore.O'Brian puts you so squarely aboard a frigate in His Majesty's Navy that you can hear the flap of every sail in the mizzen top and the creak of all the boards on the quarterdeck, feel the fusty, cordite closeness of the gunroom and taste the maggoty hardtack on a long voyage to the Antipodes.There's never a dull moment, with the pace racing along from battle to hurricane to intrigue to the occasional South Pacific idyll, and in a subtler but grander arc, we come to know every foible, every thought process and the deep strengths of two of the greatest characters in popular literature, Capt. "Lucky Jack" Aubrey and his particular friend, the ship's surgeon, naturalist and spy, Dr. Stephen Maturin. Their odd-couple friendship, finding perfect harmony in the Boccherini duets at which they bang away every evening on their violin and cello, is a source of ever deepening delight the further into the series you get.The particulars of the narrative in The Wine-Dark Sea, which takes the frigate Surprise from bloody, decktop clashes with French privateers in the South Pacific to an attempted coup in Peru and, finally, a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with an American brig amidst jagged ice mountains in Antarctica, have been ably recounted by many others here. Let me just say that this is a worthy link in the chain of stories that have kept me entertained and charmed for five years now, and that make me a little sad to have only three books left. If you haven't set sail with Patrick O'Brian's yet, then start with Book 1, Master and Commander, sit back, and enjoy the ride.
What do You think about The Wine-Dark Sea (1994)?
What I wrote in my LJ while I was reading this book:Spoilers and possibly slash ahoy.___I read on a grand total of four (4!!! OMG) pages in "The Wine-Dark Sea" yesterday, because I really couldn't resist and it was just SUCH a happy four pages that I completely choked up with love. I'm entirely too attached to these books, I swear.[After a particularly trying and tiring and anxious couple of days where they refit the Franklin:]The Surprises cheered; from over the water the weary Franklins did th
—Gilly McGillicuddy
"No. Harking back to this voyage, I think it was a failure upon the whole, and a costly failure." (261)I'm not sure this is an advisable way to end a book--especially a book which, in my opinion, had more downs than ups. I really enjoyed the beginning of this one, with a plot point that was different from anything Aubrey and Maturin have experienced on other voyages (and it's a good thing this point comes up early in the novel, since Geoff Hunt's cover illustration gives it away).But then...oh, the second half of the book. There is definitely a limit of how much time the story should follow the wanderings of Stephen on land, and for me this book crosses that line mightily. The strange thing about the Peru part of The Wine-Dark Sea is that somehow O'Brian obscures and confuses what we should be paying attention to. I was never sure--is Dutourd's activity harmful to Stephen's objective? And other events that would normally have been quite weighty--Jack and crew in a near-death sea experience, Stephen's loss of some important bits--kind of come and go without a lot of commentary or import. It all left me feeling a bit puzzled, and I found this volume to be one of the least focused of the series, the first time I've thought that O'Brian himself might be getting tired of extending the story. I guess there's a sadness in seeing these characters not just ageing but actually becoming old.This book made me feel bad about how much I hadn't liked Martin in the previous book, because he has such a rough time of it in this story. But though he's mostly relegated to a bit part, I thought his development was the most intriguing aspect of this story. Sam Panda, on the other hand, is really cheesy and too-perfect. It's like the sun shines just a little bit brighter whenever he's around. I expect to learn that he can understand the speech of cute little animals and birds.I miss Sophie. My reviews of the Aubrey/Maturin series: Master and Commander Post Captain H.M.S. Surprise The Mauritius Command Desolation Island The Fortune of War The Surgeon's Mate The Ionian Mission Treason's Harbour The Far Side of the World The Reverse of the Medal The Letter of Marque The Thirteen-Gun Salute The Nutmeg of Consolation Clarissa Oakes The Wine-Dark Sea The Commodore The Yellow Admiral The Hundred Days Blue at the Mizzen 21
—Neil Coulter
This installment of the Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin novels begins where "The Truelove" left off--with Captain Aubrey's 28-gun frigate "Surprise" pursuing an American privateer, the "Franklin," which had escaped them in the previous installment. They capture it after both ships are disabled during a volcanic eruption at sea, fascinatingly described in all its wondrous details (one of which gives the book its title). After sailing their prize to Lima, the "Surprise" leaves Maturin on shore so he c
—Travis
