[.ca] Blue at the Mizzen (ISBN 1433202557)

From Amazon.com:
Almost three decades after commencing his maritime epic with Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian is still at it. The 20th episode, Blue at the Mizzen, is another swashbuckling adventure on the high seas, complete with romantic escapades from smoggy London to Sierra Leone, diplomacy, espionage, the intricacies of warfare, and imperial brinksmanship. As always, these events are bound up in the ongoing friendship between two officers of the Royal Navy. Jack Aubrey is the naval captain, bold yet compassionate, innovative yet cautious, as fearless in war as he is bumbling in affairs of the heart and household. His boon companion Stephen Maturin is the ship's surgeon--and additionally a spy for the British government, a wealthy Catalonian aristocrat, a doting Irish father, and an avid naturalist. That may sound like a lot to keep track of. However, it's not necessary to carry around a scorecard or ship's roster while reading Blue at the Mizzen. The ostensible issue is whether Jack will finally be promoted to Admiral of the Blue. But long before he hears any word from the Napoleonic era's equivalent of Personnel, he loses half his crew to desertion, his ship undergoes a disastrous collision, and the entire company comes close to perishing in the ice-choked seas off Cape Horn. Meanwhile, the widowed Maturin issues a surprising proposal of marriage to a beautiful, mud-bespattered fellow naturalist while trekking through an African mangrove swamp. (The two lovebirds happen to be searching for a rare variant of Caprimulgus longipennis, the long-tailed nightjar, which they hope to surprise in full mating plumage.) Still, this is hardly a plot-driven novel. O'Brian takes time to get anywhere, and invariably enjoys the journey more than the arrival. So even as we get constant hints of the climax to come--Jack's spectacular naval action on behalf of the infant Republic of Chile--we don't mind hearing about the nuances of shipboard existence or the secret life of the white-faced tree duck. We're treated, for example, to this snippet about managed care, circa 1816: Poll, Maggie and a horse-leech from the starboard watch have been administering enemas to the many, many cases of gross surfeit that have now replaced the frostbites, torsions, and debility of the recent past, the very recent past. Strong, fresh, seal-meat has not its equal for upsetting the seaman's metabolism: he is much better kept on biscuits, Essex cheese, and a very little well-seethed salt pork--kept on short commons. And we're grateful! We can only hope that the elderly author will favor us with at least one more novel, so that his avid followers can avoid their own form of short commons. Life without Aubrey and Maturin would be a deprivation indeed. --Andrew Himes

The last of one of the greatest of all historical fiction series:
I am writing this several years now after "Blue at the Mizzen" was released. It seemed shortly thereafter I heard that the author Patrick O'Brian, then in his 90's, had died. I remember actually having tears at the thought that Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin would be on the sea forever, and never again on land and we readers of theirs would never know anything about them again. Since then the publisher released a short chapter-long handwritten book of what would have been Mr O'Brian's first few pages of his next book...but I haven't yet been able to read it yet. Also the movie with Russell Crowe came out, a combination of a few of the books put together and not too bad at all. If you love a book, I think you always fear when you hear a movie is going to be made!! Overall, as most of the other reviewers here have said, it is a wonderful series that I doubt will ever be duplicated. If anyone is reading any of these reviews and has not read the series, you MUST start with "Master and Commander" and go in order for it to make sense, this series builds upon each prior book. It is, as others have said, one very long book. In fact, it is 20 years or so of the lives of these two men whom we come to care so much about, and who come to feel so real to us. I must add, I have read Aubrey was based on a real person, I've been looking but can't locate the name right now. I know the details and research O'Brian put into the books are true to life. It was a terribly hard life, and not for the weak, whether you were a common sailor or an officer. Thank you Patrick O'Brian, for the pleasure in the reading, and for the great amount of information about this time in history,that you have saved and passed on to us and to future generations!

Historical fiction doesn't get much better than this series.:
I'm reviewing, here, the entirety of O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, because I consider it to be essentially one novel. The first, and most astonishing, strength of this series is in its characterization. Not only are the contrasting, yet inseparable, friends Jack and Stephen believable, appealing, vividly human characters, but they change realistically through time. To the reader, they appear as "real" people with "real" lives, perhaps more so than some of the the flesh and blood ephemera around us. The secondary characters, too, shine -- Killick is priceless. Research, of course, is O'Brian's other great strength. It's not only the ships, about which he seems to know everything. There's no aspect of the period -- food, dialect, religion, music -- in which he does not seem to be well versed. And he conveys this information to the reader in interesting ways, rather than encumbering the text with massive info-dumps. One often overlooked bright spot in this series is its humor. Too often historical fiction has a self-consciously grim quality. O'Brian can be grim -- crushingly depressing, in fact --but... "Swiving Monachorum". Action and battles are not, strangely, this series' strongest point. When we get them, they're great, but too often they are skipped over or told in a distant third-person viewpoint. But the worst here is still very good indeed. I would recommend reading all of these, in order, starting with the first one, right away, as soon as you possibly can. It's true that The Hundred Days marks a low point -- I agree with the reviewers who cite O'Brian's loss of his wife as the reason -- but Blue at the Mizzen, under which I've posted this review, marks a triumphant return of the author's powers.

Farewell Admiral Aubrey and Dr. Maturin:
Thanks to the late Patrick O'Brian for wrapping up the series on an up note. I grew as a mariner with each book in this series from a landlubber to...maybe a ships boy. Patrick O'Brian brought this incredible era of honor, corruption and raw bravery to life for me with this historically accurate series. Now that I'm reading the memoirs of the Admiral that Jack Aubrey is based on, I'm finding that much of the action in these books really happened as Mr. O'Brian tells it.

End of the Adventure:
The end of a great book always produces a letdown for me so it was a double whammy to realize as I turned the last page of Blue at the Mizzen that it was book-series-match. Reflecting back on the 20 Aubrey-Maturin books that I had read and the timeless quality of the characters, plots and historical background that brought these books to life only deepened my depression. And when I considered the tracks that O'Brian artfully laid down in this book to carry him into yet additional Aubrey-Maturin books--I decided that I needed a brandy. Patrick O'Brian is undoubtedly one of the few true masters of historical fiction and a polymath with incredible literary talent.

A wonderful way to say goodby.:
Patrick O'brien has left this world. His books and charachters have stayed at the turn of the century long ago and far away. His ships still sail, his music still sings, and his natural science still finds a world to explore and wonder at. He has created a world that will live longer, and find more resonance, than mere history and biography. I wish him well and fair winds. The circle is closed. A wonderful book, a wonderful series, a wonderful end.