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Summary
Summary
Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America--where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain--the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences.
The South American expedition is a desperate affair; and in the end Jack's bold initiative to strike at the vastly superior Spanish fleet precipitates a spectacular naval action that will determine both Chile's fate and his own.
Author Notes
Patrick O'Brian is the author of twenty volumes in the highly respected Aubrey/Maturin series of novels.
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Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
With bittersweet pleasure, readers may deem this 20thÄand possibly finalÄinstallment in O'Brian's highly regarded series featuring Capt. Jack Aubrey of the English Royal Navy and Stephen Maturin, ship's doctor, the best of the lot. Post-Waterloo, the frigate Surprise sets sail to South America as a "hydrographical vessel," ostensibly to survey the Straits of Magellan and Chile's southern coast. In fact, Jack and Stephen are to offer help to the Chilean rebels trying to break free from Spain. On their way down the coast of West Africa, romance blossoms for both men. Jack's liaison (with his cousin, Isobel, in Gibraltar) is brief, but widower Stephen's passion for Christine Wood, a naturalist who has been his correspondent for some time, turns serious in Sierra Leone. The doctor's correspondence with Christine begins with accounts of his explorations in Africa and South America, referencing, say, an "anomalous nuthatch" or the "etymology of doldrum," but they're quite wonderful love letters, functioning as a chorus to the action. Once in Chile, despite the conflict between opposing rebel camps, Jack leads a successful raid on a treasure fort in Valdivia, followed by the seizure of a Peruvian frigate to be turned over to the Chilean rebels, triumphs that reap him a just reward; at that point, readers will learn the title's significance. Throughout, familiar characters abound and entertain, especially the amusingly nasty steward, Killick, and Stephen's "loblolly girl" (nurse), Poll Skeeping. And finally, there is Horatio Hanson, bastard son of a nobleman, who comes on board as a midshipman, a dashing young foil for the ship's elders. O'Brian has rightfully been compared to Jane Austen, but one wonders if even she would have done justice to "those extraordinary hollow dwellings, sometimes as beautiful as they were comfortless." To use one of Stephen's favorite expressions, "What joy!" Agent, Georges Borchardt. (Nov.) FYI: Over three million copies of the books in the Aubrey/Maturin series have been sold. O'Brian will make two mid-November appearances in New York, one already sold out. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Scuttlebutt has it that this twentieth tale of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin is the last. If so, they are sailing into their literary sunset on a high note. Jointly they survive a drunken rampage by the Surprise's crew, a mass desertion, a collision at sea that sends the frigate turned surveying vessel back to England for repairs, and the onboard entrance of one Horatio Hanson, a midshipman patronized and possibly fathered by the duke of Clarence. They then set sail southward, where in Africa Stephen discovers that he is ready to give his heart again, if only the lady, naturalist Christine Wood, is willing to accept it. On the other side of the Atlantic, he and Jack struggle around the Horn, surviving only by managing to find a seal colony and stuffing the holds with seal meat. Finally, they enter the Pacific in time to be up to their waistcoats in the intrigues, on land and sea, of the Chilean rebellion against Spain. In the end, Jack Aubrey is promoted to rear admiral of the Blue. Meanwhile, his creator has long since earned the rank of admiral of the fleet on the seas of literature. --Roland Green
Kirkus Review
O'Brian announced long ago that he hoped to write 20 volumes in his series centering on the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and featuring Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. Along the way, he has built up a huge British following, if a lesser one in the States, although American reviewers find the series splendidly literate. And so here is volume 20, which finds Napoleon defeated at Waterloo and Jack and now-widower Stephen at Gibralter, sent on a mission to release Spain's naval stranglehold on Chile and help Chile gain her independence. Nearly half the duo's crew, however, a ragtag bunch of the stupid and least-skilled, has deserted. And an accident in the roaring darkness as the Surprise sets forth requires that it be put up for repairs. During this period Stephen falls in love with Christine Wood, a naturalist, and asks for her hand in marriage. The journey around Cape Horn to Chile takes the Surprise through the most southerly and icy of horrors. Meanwhile, Jack has the nurturing of Midshipman Horatio Hanson, the engaging bastard son of a future king of England, to think about. The climax comes when the vastly outmanned and outnumbered Surprise attacks the Spanish fleet. Escape at its most intelligent and demanding. Is this the farewell Aubrey/Maturin novel? Not very likely, with the gingery addition of Horatio Hanson to the mix.
Library Journal Review
Here is the 20th in the series presenting the escapades of Cap. Jack Aubrey of the British Royal Navy ship Surprise and his longtime companion, naval surgeon Stephen Maturin. O'Brian belongs to that select group of historical novelists who seem to write for their own audiences; his fans will greet the present volume eagerly. But for readers unacquainted with the series, Blue at the Mizzen would not be the best way to be introduced to O'Brian and his seaworthy heroes; one needs the background of the previous volumes to connect with all the characters. When we last climbed aboard the Surprise, Aubrey, Maturin, and crew had helped frustrate Napoleon in his plan to conquer Europe. In this seafaring adventure, we are off to Chile to help Bernardo O'Higgins and Jos de San Martin in their struggle to rid the country of Spanish domination. O'Brian never races through his stories; he drags them crabwise toward their predictable denouements. The current book is loaded to the gunwales with turgid dialog, ornate prose, and episodes that seem pasted on rather than built into the narrative. But that is part of O'Brian's appeal to his fans. Buy for them. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/99.]ÄA.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
