Rating: 
Summary: Lucky Jack Aubrey Returns To The Indian Ocean
Review: "The Mauritius Command", the fourth in the Aubrey/Maturin series of novels written by Patrick O'Brian, shows Captain "Lucky Jack" Aubrey several years after the events chronicled in "H.M.S. Surprise" in wedded bliss, but alas, without much of a fortune to support his growing family. Indeed, he is no longer on active command, but a Royal Navy captain on half pay. Stephen Maturin arrives bearing salvation in the form of a special mission to the Indian Ocean, along with Aubrey's temporary promotion to Commodore in command of a small squadron. What follows is one of the most exciting installments in the entire Aubrey/Maturin saga, and the start of an extended story arc which will take their fight against Napoleonic France and its allies throughout much of the Indian Ocean and the adjoining portions of Southeast Asia. Once more Patrick O'Brian delivers the goods, with his excellent, lyrical prose that seems more at home with the likes of Jane Austen than with contemporary authors of fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Why Jack, I find you are promoted!
Review: At the end of the previous novel in the series, Jack Aubrey is returning home to England and marriage to his beloved Sophie, dreaming of the rosy future.Here in the opening chapters of The Mauritius Command is that future, and they are some of the most sustained humorous scenes of the entire Canon. Poor Jack - marriage isn't quite what he imagined it to be! But all too soon we are away on another cruise with Stephen Maturin, this time with a temporary promotion to Commodore, and the flying of a broad pendant to mark the fact. There's glory for you! The bulk of the novel concerns the more or less historical campaign to win back Mauritus from the French, and it is here that I venture a word of criticism, for Patrick O'Brian bound himself a little too tightly with the actual history and has to resort to some literary strategems to keep up with the sometimes confusing action. But that's by the by and along the way we meet some fascinating new characters, revisit some happy old ones, and spend a reasonable amount of time doing the things that make a Patrick O'Brian novel so well worth reading. I enjoyed this book very much, hence the five star rating, for even a Patrick O'Brian book a trifle off his usual pace is a very good book indeed. It is a good self-contained adventure, very rare in this series where a journey quite often takes four books or so to come to a conclusion, and it comes with the necessary maps at the beginning and an excellent essay on Jack Aubrey's ships at the end, including extracts from the plans of the dear old Surprise. An excellent read and the pleasure is enhanced by the marvellous Geoff Hunt painting on the cover.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not the Best in this Series
Review: I have read the prior three novels in O'Brian's masterful Aubrey/Maturin series, and thought the first three were uniformly excellent. After a layoff, I returned to the series and while I enjoyed The Mauritius Command, I thought there was somewhat of a slip from the first few books of this 20 novel series. The novel opens promisingly, with Aubrey suffering in a less-than-ideal domestic situation. His mother-in-law lives with Jack, his wife Sophie and their cranky daughters, and his efforts to manage a farm are comical in his ineptitude. When Maturin visits, and Aubrey tries to show him around and put a brave face on his domestic struggles, the comedy inherent in O'Brian's writing comes shining through. While Jack (and the reader) itch to get to sea, it is there that O'Brian seems to lose control of the story. Aubrey gets an order to go to the Cape of Good Hope, where he is sent on a mission to dislodge the French from the Mauritius Islands and help set up a British Colonial Governor by the name of Farquar. As is usually the case, despite great achievements in the past, Jack is shackled and insufficiently rewarded by his superiors in the admiralty, and his supposed connections, through his father in the Parliament, are of little help. O'Brian seems to assume a good bit of nautical knowledge by the reader, and this landlubber sometimes got a little lost in the naval warfare scenes. The most engaging aspects of the novel seemed to me the differences in character, and the seething one-upsmanship among the various ship captains under Jack's overall command including Captains Pym, Clonfert and Corbett. The problem was, just when the author whets your appetite for some great internal conflict or drama between the brutal Corbett and the popular Clonfert, Corbett is sent from the area. Moreover, the final battle scenes are almost thrown together in summary form, as if the culmination of the mission did not really concern O'Brian as much as the hassles of getting there, and so there was a bit of a letdown at the end. I look forward to the next novel (Desolation Island I think), but have to be luke-warm in my praise of this one. I give it a fairly generous 4 stars, 3 and 1/2 if I could.
Rating:
Summary: Good but not the Best in this Series
Review: I have read the prior three novels in O'Brian's masterful Aubrey/Maturin series, and thought the first three were uniformly excellent. After a layoff, I returned to the series and while I enjoyed The Mauritius Command, I thought there was somewhat of a slip from the first few books of this 20 novel series. The novel opens promisingly, with Aubrey suffering in a less-than-ideal domestic situation. His mother-in-law lives with Jack, his wife Sophie and their cranky daughters, and his efforts to manage a farm are comical in his ineptitude. When Maturin visits, and Aubrey tries to show him around and put a brave face on his domestic struggles, the comedy inherent in O'Brian's writing comes shining through. While Jack (and the reader) itch to get to sea, it is there that O'Brian seems to lose control of the story. Aubrey gets an order to go to the Cape of Good Hope, where he is sent on a mission to dislodge the French from the Mauritius Islands and help set up a British Colonial Governor by the name of Farquar. As is usually the case, despite great achievements in the past, Jack is shackled and insufficiently rewarded by his superiors in the admiralty, and his supposed connections, through his father in the Parliament, are of little help. O'Brian seems to assume a good bit of nautical knowledge by the reader, and this landlubber sometimes got a little lost in the naval warfare scenes. The most engaging aspects of the novel seemed to me the differences in character, and the seething one-upsmanship among the various ship captains under Jack's overall command including Captains Pym, Clonfert and Corbett. The problem was, just when the author whets your appetite for some great internal conflict or drama between the brutal Corbett and the popular Clonfert, Corbett is sent from the area. Moreover, the final battle scenes are almost thrown together in summary form, as if the culmination of the mission did not really concern O'Brian as much as the hassles of getting there, and so there was a bit of a letdown at the end. I look forward to the next novel (Desolation Island I think), but have to be luke-warm in my praise of this one. I give it a fairly generous 4 stars, 3 and 1/2 if I could.
Rating:
Summary: departure from first three
Review: I'm reading these books in series and I've just recently finished The Mauritius Command. I've given all the books in this series 5 stars. The title of my review suggests that this book is a departure from the first three. This is true, but I do not want to overemphasize that point. We get here all the things we expect from an O'Brian Aubrey novel. What is different is simply the amount of time spent on the various actions. In this book, I missed more of the intimate moments between Maturin and Aubrey, playing their instruments, fretting over money, and so forth. However, this does well perhaps to put us in the mind of Aubrey for this adventure. Readers of the other novels will not be disappointed here. And of course, the quality of O'Brian's writing cannot be overstated.
Rating:
Summary: Joint Review of All Aubrey-Maturin Books
Review: Some critics have referred to the Aubrey/Maturin books as one long novel united not only by their historical setting but also by the central plot element of the Aubrey/Maturin friendship. Having read these fine books over a period of several years, I decided to evaluate their cumulative integrity by reading them consecutively in order of publication over a period of a few weeks. This turned out to be a rewarding enterprise. For readers unfamiliar with these books, they describe the experiences of a Royal Navy officer and his close friend and traveling companion, a naval surgeon. The experiences cover a broad swath of the Napoleonic Wars and virtually the whole globe.
Rereading all the books confirmed that O'Brian is a superb writer and that his ability to evoke the past is outstanding. O'Brian has numerous gifts as a writer. He is the master of the long, careful description, and the short, telling episode. His ability to construct ingenious but creditable plots is first-rate, probably because he based much of the action of his books on actual events. For example, some of the episodes of Jack Aubrey's career are based on the life of the famous frigate captain, Lord Cochrane. O'Brian excels also in his depiction of characters. His ability to develop psychologically creditable characters through a combination of dialogue, comments by other characters, and description is tremendous. O'Brien's interest in psychology went well beyond normal character development, some books contain excellent case studies of anxiety, depression, and mania.
Reading O'Brien gives vivid view of the early 19th century. The historian Bernard Bailyn, writing of colonial America, stated once that the 18th century world was not only pre-industrial but also pre-humanitarian (paraphrase). This is true as well for the early 19th century depicted by O'Brien. The casual and invariable presence of violence, brutality, and death is a theme running through all the books. The constant threats to life are the product not only of natural forces beyond human control, particularly the weather and disease, but also of relative human indifference to suffering. There is nothing particularly romantic about the world O'Brien describes but it also a certain grim grandeur. O'Brien also shows the somewhat transitional nature of the early 19th century. The British Navy and its vessals were the apogee of what could be achieved by pre-industrial technology. This is true both of the technology itself and the social organization needed to produce and use the massive sailing vessals. Aubrey's navy is an organization reflecting its society; an order based on deference, rigid hierarchy, primitive notions of honor, favoritism, and very, very corrupt. At the same time, it was one of the largest and most effective bureaucracies in human history to that time. The nature of service exacted great penalities for failure in a particularly environment, and great success was rewarded greatly. In some ways, it was a ruthless meritocracy whose structure and success anticipates the great expansion of government power and capacity seen in the rest of the 19th century.
O'Brian is also the great writer about male friendship. There are important female characters in these books but since most of the action takes place at sea, male characters predominate. The friendship between Aubrey and Maturin is the central armature of the books and is a brilliant creation. The position of women in these books is ambiguous. There are sympathetic characters, notably Aubrey's long suffering wife. Other women figures, notably Maturin's wife, leave a less positive impression. On board ship, women tend to have a disruptive, even malign influence.
How did O'Brian manage to sustain his achievement over 20 books? Beyond his technical abilities as a writer and the instrinsic interest of the subject, O'Brien made a series of very intelligent choices. He has not one but two major protagonists. The contrasting but equally interesting figures of Aubrey and Maturin allowed O'Brien to a particularly rich opportunity to expose different facets of character development and to vary plots carefully. This is quite difficult and I'm not aware of any other writer who has been able to accomplish such sustained development of two major protagonists for such a prolonged period. O'Brian's use of his historical setting is very creative. The scenes and events in the books literally span the whole globe as Aubrey and Maturin encounter numerous cultures and societies. The naval setting allowed him also to introduce numerous new and interesting characters. O'Brian was able to make his stories attractive to many audiences. Several of these stories can be enjoyed as psychological novels, as adventure stories, as suspense novels, and even one as a legal thriller. O'Brian was also a very funny writer, successful at both broad, low humor, and sophisticated wit. Finally, O'Brian made efforts to link some of the books together. While a number are complete in themselves, others form components of extended, multi-book narratives. Desolation Island, Fortune of War, and The Surgeon's Mate are one such grouping. Treason's Harbor, The Far Side of the World, and The Reverse of the Medal are another. The Letter of Marque and the ensuing 4 books, centered around a circumnavigation, are another.
Though the average quality of the books is remarkably high, some are better than others. I suspect that different readers will have different favorites. I personally prefer some of the books with greater psychological elements. The first book, Master and Commander, is one of my favorites. The last 2 or 3, while good, are not as strong as earlier books. I suspect O'Brian's stream of invention was beginning to diminish. All can be read profitably as stand alone works though there is definitely something to be gained by reading in consecutive order.
Rating:
Summary: A Psychological Study
Review: The fourth in Patrick O'Brian's wonderful seagoing series. O'Brian does not disappoint as Captain Aubrey and Stephen Maturin do battle against the French in the Indian Ocean. Here the plot turns on psychological profiles. Aubrey commands a squadron of ships, and each captain is a different study: Pym steady but unimaginative; Clonfert vainglorious, insecure, and unpredictable; Corbett daring but brutal; and Colonel Keating steady and brave. And there are Aubrey and Maturin, separately and together, musing upon the different elements in each of the captain's characters. As the action progresses, each captain is led into crisis, and each benefits and suffers by his particular choices. In some respects "The Mauritius Command", at 348 pages in the Norton edition, may be too short. Clonfert is the captain we come to know best, the others are not as fully drawn because we spend no time aboard their ships. Also, the final assault on Mauritius is reduced to a few throw-away lines on the last page, as though O'Brian turned away from the book, unfinished, and simply chose not to write the last two chapters. The book is a good one, O'Brian's intentions are clear. The captains' stark choices are grounded more in their personalities than the circumstances of the struggle. Their fates are sealed long before they join Aubrey in the Indian Ocean. "The Mauritius Command" is a thrilling psychological study.
Rating:
Summary: Superb nautical tale.
Review: The Mauritius Command is a first rate piece of historical fiction. Patrick O'Brian deftly weaves this swashbuckling nautical tale into the historical account of the British retaking the Mauritius Islands. Lucky Jack Aubrey, with a little help from Stephen Maturin, becomes a Commodore and leads his squadron of ships into battle with the French. A new father, Jack Aubrey leaves behind his wife to venture out to the Indian Ocean. His wife, Sophie, lost her dowry and story begins with Jack hurting for money. So the opportunity to have command and be back on full pay is most welcome. Commodore Aubrey's command is complicated by the personalities of his subordinate commanders. Maturin comes out of the closet and works his espionage in the open. With victory just within his grasp, Admiral Bertie arrives to take command and the credit away from Jack. Despite that setback, Lucky Jack stills finishes on top. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Superb nautical tale.
Review: The Mauritius Command is a first rate piece of historical fiction. Patrick O'Brian deftly weaves this swashbuckling nautical tale into the historical account of the British retaking the Mauritius Islands. Lucky Jack Aubrey, with a little help from Stephen Maturin, becomes a Commodore and leads his squadron of ships into battle with the French. A new father, Jack Aubrey leaves behind his wife to venture out to the Indian Ocean. His wife, Sophie, lost her dowry and story begins with Jack hurting for money. So the opportunity to have command and be back on full pay is most welcome. Commodore Aubrey's command is complicated by the personalities of his subordinate commanders. Maturin comes out of the closet and works his espionage in the open. With victory just within his grasp, Admiral Bertie arrives to take command and the credit away from Jack. Despite that setback, Lucky Jack stills finishes on top. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating addition to a fabulous series
Review: The opening of THE MAURITIUS COMMAND finds "Lucky" Jack Aubrey married, poor, and bored. He is without a command, on half pay, and doing no more than tinkering with his telescopes. Happily, his particular friend Stephen Maturin comes bearing glad tidings: an assignment leading an expedition to capture the French-held islands of Mauritius and La Reunion just east of Madagascar. Unlike the previous novels, where Jack commands a vessel usually unattached from joint maneuvers, he here commands several ships. Unfortunately, the Commodore (as Jack is temporarily called) has a problem: the captains of the three primary ships are troublesome. Lord Clonfert nurses a long held jealously of Jack's fame and success, and has a tendency for self-promotion and showmanship. Pym is solid, but in the end lacks judgment in battle. Corbett is the polar opposite of Jack in regard to discipline. While Jack believes in discipline, he staunchly believes that brutality and frequent punishment is both cruel and counterproductive, leading to an unhappy ship. Corbett, on the other hand, is a savage disciplinarian, and keeps his crew on the edge of mutiny. All of the novels in the series have their unique appeal, and this one delights in its chronicling the course of a single campaign, a campaign that O'Brian notes is based quite closely on real events. The novel is also superb in its setting in a locale of which most readers will be utterly unfamiliar. It is also fun because more than in the previous novels, Stephen Maturin plays a more prominent role as an intelligence officer, and his work on the islands in fermenting rebellion against the French is as crucial as Jack's role in leading the military expedition. I would caution anyone tempted to read O'Brian to start with the very first novel and work from the first to the last. I deeply love these books, but they do not stand alone.
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