Blue at the Mizzen

Rating:
Summary: Another really good one of course.
Review: I am now anxious for the next one to come out. In the mean time I highly recommend Henry Holt & Company's Heart of Oak series one of the best seafaring British Naval novels, particularly the ones by Frederick Marryat.

Rating:
Summary: Alter egos?
Review: I suppose we have to see Maturin and Aubrey as representing two sides of O'Brian's own way of looking at the world - not his personality: I don't think writing leads to so crude a self-identification as that. If that's so, then it makes sense to me of the darker, less committed feeling of the last two books. The death of the author's wife after so many years of close and happy marriage is bound to have affected the way he looks at the world, and it would have been surprising if these last two books were not elegaiac and downcast, full of loss and a kind of depression. I find that thought comforting in an odd way. The books up to The Hundred Days were so nearly perfect, so engrossing, that I was taken aback by 100 Days, which seemed at first so much less persuasive. I've just finished 'Blue' and although not up to the strength of the earlier books - how could it be? - it seemed to have taken a deep breath and begun to look around again at how things are. I too thought it was supposed to be the last. If it is, then Patrick O'Brian has played his last sly trick on his readers. But it doesn't read like it. They're not real people; but an author has to have some sense of resolution in his or her head, or the act of creation remains incomplete. I hope there will be a final, calmer closing when O'Brian, too, returns to harbour

Rating:
Summary: Blue at Half-Staff
Review: A disappointing series of vignettes with major gaps in the story line. As a retired naval officer I'm aware that there is very little reportable during a long sea voyage, but the author hasn't provided bridges between the events he does report. Maturin seems the main character in this one. Hopefully, the next book (and I presume there's one in the works as "Blue at the Mizzen" appears only at the next-to-last page of this one) will be better.

Rating:
Summary: avid reader
Review: the best ever. I'm reading them a second time

Rating:
Summary: best of the last half dozen
Review: The last 6 or so of this series haven't been as good as the others- but with this, hopefully last in the series,O'Brian goes out on somewhat of a high.The series has seemed hastily written & devoid of life- good time to end

Rating:
Summary: Such finely aged spirits!
Review: So seemingly effortless, yet so rich in every phrase --- O'Brian is again at the top of his form; not just the tale he tells, but also the way he throws off ideas, characters, and plot with brief phrases that sing together so sweetly. It's a rare fine wine, enjoyed best by those who have developed a taste for it in the first twenty volumnes. Aubrey has aged, and has grown more silent, more brooding, the aging man of action losing some of his physical prowess, his ambition, but with habits of courage so deeply ingrained; Maturin the aging philosophe, brought to life not only by his spirited study of the natural world but also by the discovery of his aging heart's new trilling at the thought of Ms Woods. God, this stuff is great!

Rating:
Summary: Did O'Brian truly write the whole thing?
Review: I don't know about this one--many of the earlier chapters felt to me as if someone listed all the O'Brian quirks and twists of language and then trotted out the characters and pasted them in here and there. It did not truly sing of Patrick O'Brian. I was disappointed that while Maturin seemingly narrates throughout the book, his usual curmudgeonly and unkempt personality rarely showed. It was "Stephen Lite", especially considering losing Diana and dealing with a very distant Jack.(No matter how tired a contrivance it was, I always enjoyed Jack's roaring bad puns, red face and passion for puddings!) The last few books have been less engaging, too, but I heard O'Brian's voice much less in Blue at the Mizzen than in any of them. I realize the trials of age may dim that creativity we have come to expect. I faithfully finished the book (it improved later). I wish Mr. O'Brian well.

Rating:
Summary: Not one of O'Brian's best
Review: While certainly not a bad book, Blue at the mizzen is not one of the most interesting in the Aubrey/Maturin series. There is not a lot of action or tension in our hero's adventures in South America. Jack Aubrey is increasingly distant, and we get the majority of the story from Maturin. Even so, Maturin's espionage activities are somewhat less than gripping. I've heard rumors that this is the last book in the series, but there are a ton of things left unresolved, and I find It hard to believe that O'Brian would end the series this way.

Rating:
Summary: good but not great
Review: This volume is a worthy successor to "100 Days" It follows the error of that volume in that Obryan continues his technique of failing to develop plot and characters as he did in earlier volumes. The main plot is excellant. Aubry and Maturin are indeed engaged in another worthy task envolving personal relationships, seamanship, politics and South American revolutions. The flow of the novel is great and it comes to a logical conclusion leaving us anticipating the obvious next novel where newly frocked Adm. Aubry hoists his flag and goes forth. Obryan is falling into the trench so many novelists fall into however as he assumes much knowledge on the part of his readers. He skips over many opportunities to develop many subplots and details that made his earlier novels such a delite to read and reread. Who can forget the exquisite revenge of Maturin in not only killing by dissecting his enemies; the dissertations of Maturing on women and other things. I'm not doing well at this and in thinking I'm doing the same thing as Obryan; describing the bones but the meat is thin. Charlie Cox

Rating:
Summary: JACK AUBREY RIDES THE WAVES AGAIN
Review: Aubrey and Maturin, Maturin and Aubrey - their lives and fortunes are as convoluted as the plot twists of the latest of Patrick O'Brien's chronicles. Picking up where The 100 Days left off, the pair cross the ocean, engage in middle-aged derring-do, and save the day for the twentieth time, with a spot of unexpected romance thrown in. As always the historical references are accurate; the minor failures of plot in this latest episode are easily overlooked. After all, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are men like no others in modern fiction; they fight, love, drink, indulge in excesses, mourn, spy, and get away with the loot better than anyone. They're a pair of upright Harry Flashmans, ready to rescue the damsel, make off with the gold, and free the oppressed colonials from their decadent rulers. Hornblower never had it this good.