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Summary: I'm ready to set sail!
Review: Having just finished the first of the series, I am ready to say that I am at the least intrigued. More than interesting (once you conquer the flow of the prose), the book is a boat ride that is as adventuresome as the Sophie. O'Brian is humerous, dramatic, sad, suspensful, and even philosophic -- sometimes all on the same page! I would recommend this book to anyone with the patience to let it grab them, and the ability to wrap their brain around the more difficult passages. Knowledge of the nautical is not necessary, and by the end of the book an imagined familiarity with the terms has crept in. A great read, and a good start to what seems to be a classic series of novels.
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Summary: Among the minority: Couldn't have been more disappointed
Review: I bought this book after hearing and reading all the hype about the series and was really looking forward to it. But I must second the few other reviewers here who did not like it. I wish I had paid more attention to their comments.I am not a sailor and the text is so full of technical terms (it is truly a technical tour-de-force), I probably understood only 10% of what I read. I recommend A Sea of Words by Dean King to those of you who like, but don't understand, this series. It is an essential companion work for the non-sea-going reader. Indeed, I think the publisher would have done readers a tremendous favor by including a glossary at the end of the novel. I expected some technical terms and information, but all the reviews I had read emphasized the character development. What character development? At the end of the book, I knew little more about Aubrey and Maturin than I did when I started and what I learned didn't much interest me. Even the battle scenes were repetitive and boring. I stuck it through to the end, but I have rarely been more bored by a work of fiction. I strongly suggest that potential buyers borrow or browse a copy before buying to find out if they're part of the majority or the minority. If the first couple of pages bore one, as they did me, so will the rest of the book.
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Summary: Sailing Ship Technology
Review: Eagle Seamanship, A Manual for Square-Rigger Sailing, By Lt. Edwin H. Daniels, Jr. USCG (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1990), an essential companion for the O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin Series, explains the operation of a "Tall Ship."
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Summary: Opening chapter to what may be the best epic ever.
Review: The only reason I don't give this book four stars is that it takes about 100 pages to get into, quite a bit for a 400-odd page book, until you consider that it is really a >2000 page epic divided into 20 chapters. This epic is life, neatly set out in black type, and anyone with a life today will appriciate how similar it is to life 200 years ago. A note of caution, though: if you get through those first hundred pages, you may not be able to put these works down until you've read all twenty volumes.
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Summary: Superb... absolutely
Review: These are the finest historical novels that I have ever read. They not only provide exciting reading, but they immerse you in the world of late 18th/early 19th century England as nothing I have ever seen before. I can't say enough good things about the series. One caveat, however: give yourself some time to become accustomed to the language. It is somewhat sticky at first, but after a short while, it becomes totally clear and natural.
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Summary: Sherman, set the "Way Back" for 1800.
Review: I opened the book with no particular interest in the sea or the history of this period but was pleasantly surprised. After about twenty pages or so I was hooked. I look forward to reading the next adventure in this series. When you start this book, check out the diagram in the front that introduces the sailing vocabulary.
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Summary: BUY ALL OF THEM
Review: I WAS NOT SURE THAT I WOULD LIKE THIS AUTHOR BUT AFTER READING THE FIRST BOOK OF THE SERIES I BOUGHT THE OTHER 14. GREAT WORK! ENTERTAINING! HISTORICAL.
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Summary: Truely Realistic Series
Review: Each of these books "stands alone" as a story, but the series is best read from the beginning; Master and Commander. In the series, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend, surgeon Stephen Maturin live all of the many redundances of real life. As a midshipman, young Jack carved his initials into the mast head of the ship Suprise. Now, as a reader, we climb to the same mast head to see those same initials every time one of the series brings us back on board the Surprise. This gives a depth to the characters, and the entire series not found in similiar English/Napolionic Naval chronicals.
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Summary: The beginning of a great chronicle
Review: I first read Master and Commander shortly after it was published in the early seventies. I found it to be extremely interesting and have since read all twenty volumes of the Aubrey/Maturin chronicle. These books are not really novels, but studies of the lives and progress of two men during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While the main emphasis is on the British Royal Navy during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, the continuing story also gives an in-depth look at the society and culture of the period. The series is not for everyone, but rather for those of us who love a rousing yarn of the sea. I thought I was pretty well up on sea-faring terms but I found that O'Brian came up with a number I had never heard of. So, if you don't like detailed ship terminology, the series is probably not for you.
Rating:
Summary: Best set of historical novels I've ever read
Review: Would recommend this set of books to anyone. This first novel takes about 100 pages to get into - the amount of sea jargon to absorb might be daunting - but if you get this far then you are home free. The books have everything: excellent character development, thoughtful prose, interesting settings geographically and historically, very gripping plots. I like best that the author assumes that his reader is capable of getting it without hitting the reader over the head. These books are true treasures.
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