Another great entry in the Aubrey/Maturin series. This would ideally be read by someone who's read the seventeen previous instalments. You wouldn't have any difficulty following what's going on, but I think the author is playing to his regular audience here. Action scenes that once would have been played out in extraordinary detail are here often compressed or skipped entirely, I imagine because regular readers of the series have seen it all before, or because the author had written it all before and was disinclined to repeat himself. No need for another twenty- or thirty-page naval engagement, when there's been plenty of those in previous books. No need either to show Stephen's intelligence-agenting adventures on land, when we've been there and done that often enough. I do miss the detailed naval battles, but if I was reading the series more quickly, as I plan to do next time, I'm sure I'd be happy with the avoidance of repetition.Instead the novel focuses on elements of the story that are new or less familiar to the series' regular audience. The most detailed action scene - and it's a good one, both exciting and full of precise historical detail, just like the naval battles of previous books - is a bare-knuckle boxing match. Of all the violent conflicts in the story, this is the least familiar to us, and hence the one the author focuses on. The novel opens with some historical exposition - not the series' most exciting few pages, but bear with it - concerning the 'enclosing' into large commercial farms of previously 'common' land. When common land is enclosed, the people who had lived off it are reduced to casual labourers at the mercy of the farmer. (This is also the subject of Jim Crace's new novel, Harvest.) Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy, one of our two protagonists, is Lord of the Manor of his local district, and he's passionately against the enclosing which a neighbour, Captain Griffiths (also of the Navy), intends. In short, enclosure of this land will make Griffiths rich, while impoverishing the local villagers and ending a way of life that has endured since time immemorial.This gives us a rare chance to see Jack at work on the land, for once not hopelessly out of his depth in that unfamiliar element. It also sets the scene for much of what follows, when Jack's next naval mission brings him under the command of an Admiral with a passion for enclosure. The Admiral also happens to be Captain Griffiths' uncle. Will he take Jack's opposition amiss and make his life hell? Oh yes.If the novel has a theme, it may be the power of 'influence' over merit. Much has been made in the series of the importance of having the right ancestors, the right friends, membership of the right gentleman's club, to get ahead in its world. Now this comes to a head: 'influence' may work for justice when Jack wields it to defend his peasants from Griffiths; and influence may work against justice by making Jack's working life a misery and destroying his career, despite his well-established merits as a sailor. The 'yellow admiral' of the title might refer to the antagonistic Admiral Stranraer, but it also refers to Jack's great fear: to be a 'yellow admiral' - that is, to have the official rank of Admiral but no command role - is considered shameful, and it seems this will be his fate if Stranraer blackens his record and sets the Navy committee against him. Meanwhile, Jack's friend Stephen Maturin, our other protagonist, and his contacts in Naval intelligence, apply their influence to try and rescue Jack's career.Long ago, the series diverged from strict realism regarding the passing of time. The Far Side of the World (book 10) opens with a note in which the author regrets that he's running out of Napoleonic wars, when this brief period provides the best scope for our heroes to have interesting adventures. Those sea voyages take such a long time that if he stuck to strict temporal reality the war would soon be over, and yet he still has many more stories to tell. And so the series enters a 'long 1813', during which the main characters and their friends and families experience at least six years' worth of wear and tear, with our heroes enduring several long stints as prisoners of war and twice circumnavigating the globe. In The Yellow Admiral the series plunges back into history with a splash, not only giving us actual dates and real historical events again, but compressing a whole calendar year into a chapter.A few odd things in The Yellow Admiral struck me, too random to really belong in this review but I feel like recording them somewhere, and why not here? There were several times when I thought the author, now in his eighties, might be slipping, but then decided he knew exactly what he was doing. Firstly, there are two minor characters named 'Harding'. This seemed an error, initially. But then I decided O'Brian is really shrugging off one of the unrealistic conventions of fiction here. In fiction, names are virtually always unique, to help the reader understand what's going on; in real life, as here, we know people who share names. It doesn't confuse us in real life, and barely inspires comment except in those cases where people have the same first and second names. Secondly, Jack introduces Stephen to Captain Fanshawe twice, about 20 pages apart, each time apparently unsure if Fanshawe has ever met Stephen. Did the author forget, or did Jack? In the end I decided this was Jack's slip, that it was another in a series of subtle indications that Jack's memory is failing, which might be picked up in later books, or which might have been developed in the books the author intended to write but didn't. O'Brian sometimes plants seeds that won't be sown for many books to come.
Early in The Yellow Admiral, Maturin and Sir Joseph have a lengthy conversation about events between the end of the previous book and the start of this one. This is followed soon after by a long, long conversation between Stephen and Jack about inclosing common land throughout England. Ah, I thought. How I have missed extended scenes of domestic life at home in England, after so many long sea voyages. I thought to myself, Some readers probably don't even have the patience for a long conversation on some historical topic. But when the conversation between Jack and Stephen is followed very soon after by yet another very long expositional discussion between Stephen and Bonden about boxing, even I began to lose patience. There are a lot of conversations in this book, many of them little more than O'Brian explaining some detail about early 19th century English life to the reader. That this happens throughout a volume that features a blockade as the only naval action is unfortunate.In addition to the patience-testing of the conversations, and the absence of especially interesting naval scenes, The Yellow Admiral also pushes the boundaries of how much the reader can invest in yet more ups and downs in the finances and marriages of Aubrey and Maturin. We've been through this before--we've spent multiple books worried about Jack's fortune; and now, after things had seemed very nicely settled in the last book, to have that rug pulled from under us again is wearying. And this time, the suspense does not even carry through the whole book, let alone into the next volume.After the first third of this book--in which I wondered how Diana could have become so painfully bland a character--I was happy to see that Stephen and Diana's marriage by the end of the book has actually matured into something quite beautiful. They share a farewell that is more poignant than I would have believed possible at most stages of this series:[T]hey parted reluctantly, like lovers, unwilling, forced and constrained, regretting the fair breeze that carried the boat out, out and away. (194)For that, and for the glimpse of Stephen and Diana's pillow-talk about Jack and Sophie, I can forgive Diana for being so bland earlier, and I can possibly forgive Clarissa for falling from the most interesting character in the series to one of the most useless (I do still hope for more for Clarissa before the end). 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
What do You think about The Yellow Admiral (1997)?
O'Brian is always a pleasure, and to discover that I had not in fact read this as I assumed I had, was a wonderful moment. It is perhaps not the most exciting of his works, but it is a pleasure to be immersed in his world, meeting up with old friends. It's a very different world to ours, and not one I think I would be happy to live in, but, as Aubrey himself says "The old ways had disadvantages, of course, but here - and I speak on ly of what I know - it was a human life, and the people kew its ways and customs through and through." Perhaps that is what makes reading O'Brian such a comforting experience: for all the undoubted advantages of the industrial revolution - and you don't have to read many descriptions of Maturin's surgeries to be very grateful for modern medicine in general and anaesthetics in particular - it is a human life we have left behind us. Not necessarily his absolute best, but engaging, calming, and always worth a read.
—Alister Pate
Patrick O'Brian's long-running naval history series takes place mostly, and naturally, on board ships at sea, but ships must occasionally touch shore and their captains and crew must live, at least for a time, on land. Readers who have followed this series throughout its development know that time ashore invariably means disaster for Jack Aubrey. The sea is his natural habitat and when he steps ashore he becomes, almost literally, like a fish out of water.The action of The Yellow Admiral takes place mostly on land and Aubrey is gasping for air and a way to survive professionally and in his personal life throughout.This book follows The Commodore which saw the successful conclusion to the long, long voyage of Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin in the Pacific. We find Aubrey with substantial land holdings but hardly a penny to his name. Impoverishment is not a new and unknown country for him; he's been there before many times. But now his land holdings make him a voting member of Parliament, and, unfortunately, as far as the Admiralty is concerned, he persists in voting the wrong way.Moreover, he engages in a feud with his neighbor, who has strong ties to the Admiralty. The neighbor wants to enclose the common land between their two estates, but Jack is implacably against enclosure. This makes him popular with the common people in his district but distinctly unpopular with the elites.More trouble comes when Jack is sent to participate in a blockade of Brest. In stormy waters there, he captures a French privateer but is accused of missing a signal and deserting a post to do so.While he is away on blockade, his mother-in-law comes to stay at his home with his wife, Sophie. She rummages around in Jack's papers and finds letters which seem to incontrovertibly expose his adultery. Of course, she gleefully shows them to Sophie who is devastated and ready to "take advice" from a solicitor.Then the worst possible thing in Aubrey's world happens: Peace breaks out in 1814. Napoleon is sent to Elba and the British navy stands down. No more chance for glory. Jack fears that his naval career will end with a whimper rather than a bang. He faces the ignominious prospect of being "yellowed," meaning that he would be nominally promoted to the rank of admiral but without any squadron to command.Riding to his rescue once again is his particular friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin.Maturin has been happily reunited with his beloved Diana, and their daughter, Brigid, once feared to be developmentally challenged, has blossomed under the care of Maturin's loblolly boy, Padeen, and his friend, Clarissa Oakes. She has become an active chatterbox of a child, a delight to her parents. Stephen's fortune has been restored and, in fact, everything seems to be coming up Maturin.Stephen returns from an intelligence mission in France where he made contact with some of the people he had met in South America when he was trying to foment a revolution in Peru. His contacts are Chilean and they are interested in securing their country's independence from Spain. To accomplish this, they require a navy and the help of English officers. If Jack agrees to aid them, it will mean taking his name off the List, the sacred Admiralty document that determines the progress of a naval man's career. He is at first reluctant to accept the assignment but on the assurance that he can be restored to the List with no loss of rank if England goes to war again or upon the completion of his employment by Chile, he agrees to the terms.It's all signed, sealed, and delivered. Aubrey takes the Surprise, their refurbished privateer, and heads out to Chile with Stephen and with both of their families aboard. The families are to go as far as Madeira for a vacation there and the Surprise will continue on its mission. But while in Madeira, Aubrey receives a letter from the Admiral, apologizing for a perceived slight, and calling him back to duty. Napoleon has escaped Elba!These books have been a joy to read throughout, and, as we get near the end of the series, they just seem to get better. I started the series with some trepidation because of the authentic technical naval vocabulary the author employs in telling his stories, but I soon learned to allow that vocabulary (that I was not really interested in learning) to simply wash over me and become a kind of background noise that did lend authenticity but did not distract from the development of the characters and their relationships which is the real meat of the stories. Also, the characters are mostly male and that might seem to make them difficult to relate to for someone of my sex. But, in fact, their gender doesn't matter. They are simply fully realized human beings and I love the time that I spend with them.
—Dorothy
Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, the main characters of the continuing Patrick O'Brian saga of the naval wars between Great Britain and Napoleonic France, have both finally, after much strife, found financial fortune. But O'Brian is not content to leave well enough alone regarding his subjects' comforts. By the time this book begins, Jack and wife Sophie are facing loss of their farm due to disputes over the expected remuneration for the capture of slave ships, while the Spanish government has impounded Stephen's money. Jack finds out how ugly it can be when personal business mixes with professional career development. He is an MP in the House of Commons and he takes a stand against powerful interests regarding enclosing commons land. His new boss, the admiral of the fleet blockading the port of Brest, is aligned with Jack's political enemies, and this does not bode well for his naval career. Many personal complications confront Stephen and Jack as they apply their considerable respective spying and ship captaining skills to fighting the French. The defeat of Napoleon's forces means Jack will be placed on the naval inactive list. However, unlike countless other officers, his connected friend Stephen will be able to sail arrange for the "Surprise" to sail again as a privateer to help the fight for Chilean independence, with Jack as the Captain. Everyone's plans are undermined, however, when Napoleon escapes from Elba.The import of the actual historical Napoleonic events underlying this book's storyline make it a key installment in the Captain Aubrey series. Nevertheless, this is one of the most complex books in the series, to my recollection, with all kinds of forces affecting the fate of the two characters, including serious marital trouble for Captain Jack. In the end, as usual, enough of the story becomes resolved to make it an interesting journey along side Jack and Stephen, while leaving enough questions to tempt the reader to eagerly await the next volume.
—Richard
