Master And Commander

A hoot of a tale. For a sailing nerd I loved the unapologetic technical accuracy even though 80% went sailing over my head (or googling like mad) The characters, so far, are pretty one dimensional, the plot is no more deeper than a shipping log, but I understand that both are fleshed out in subsequent books. It is, however, a very cozy read, familiar, even though I cannot quite put my finger on why. I can myself dipping into the next ones as I get a chance.

These are great books. However, O'Brian is famous for his use very arcane language(party because he is one of the last writers to have gone to sea as a boy in the early part of 20th century). If your unfamiliar with sailing nautical terms you should pick up the lexicon for the series called “A Sea of Words”.

I'm not sure whether to rate this 4 starts or 5 stars. On the one hand, the world-building is amazing and actually feels like the book was written in the 19th Century. On the other hand, the book assumes a virtually expert-level knowledge of 19th Century sailing terminology. How you get on with the book will largely depend on how willing you are to set aside the dictionary and just go with the flow.

In any event, the book is very well written and is genuinely thrilling at times (in fact, one of the battles manages to be thrilling even though witnessed from a distance). I'm very much looking forward to the next in the series...

The first third of this book is slow and heavily bogged down by long, dry passages of O'Brian showing off his scholarly knowledge of ships. I like ships and admire the attention to authentic historical detail, but God, Pat! It's turgid stuff. You cannot and will not understand all the nautical jargon in this book, to such a degree that another dude wrote a whole other book just to help.

The quicker you can get through those early rocky waters, the better. The sprinkling of great Aubrey/Maturin character moments just about got me through, as their relationship is the star of the show from the first chapter. Their different types of naivety and dog-vs-cat contrast in personality are so entertaining and endearing. O'Brian's character work is wonderful and witty, and I also really enjoy his omniscient, bygone-era style of narration.

The book gets exponentially better as it goes on, delivering the ship-based combat, tense pursuits, bad weather, and interpersonal drama I wanted from the start. I understand that the later books in the series are less laden with dumpings of encyclopedic technical detail, so I look forward to getting into those in future. This one's a challenging but ultimately worthwhile opener.