Rating: 
Summary: Aubrey hoists his pennant...
Review: "The Mauritius Command" opens a few years after the end of "HMS Surprise". Jack has discovered married life to be very different than he imagined, & longs to be back at sea. The arrival of Stephen Maturin (& mushrooms) stirs the household to a frenzy. This humorous beginning shows Patrick O'Brian's masterful abilities. In a few deft strokes, the past years are filled in with no heavy exposition or flashbacks, & the events to come are put into motion. Aubrey faces many new challenges in the course of "The Mauritius Command", having to learn to sooth battling egos, command while refraining from fighting, & create a fighting machine from almost nothing. His faithful follower Tom Pullings plays an expanded role in this tale as the captain of a transport & deus ex machina, while Stephen Maturin's political abilities overshadow his medical duties. This is one of the most exciting Aubrey/Maturin novels, a real "Boys Own Life" type tale, full of gunplay, cat & mouse feints & hearty comradeship. The most exciting aspect of it is that it all really happened (of course with different protagonists!). Learn about a forgotten campaign of the Napoleonic wars & enjoy yourself in the process! Read "The Mauritius Command"!
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: Aubrey hoists his pennant...
Review: "The Mauritius Command" opens a few years after the end of "HMS Surprise". Jack has discovered married life to be very different than he imagined, & longs to be back at sea. The arrival of Stephen Maturin (& mushrooms) stirs the household to a frenzy. This humorous beginning shows Patrick O'Brian's masterful abilities. In a few deft strokes, the past years are filled in with no heavy exposition or flashbacks, & the events to come are put into motion. Aubrey faces many new challenges in the course of "The Mauritius Command", having to learn to sooth battling egos, command while refraining from fighting, & create a fighting machine from almost nothing. His faithful follower Tom Pullings plays an expanded role in this tale as the captain of a transport & deus ex machina, while Stephen Maturin's political abilities overshadow his medical duties. This is one of the most exciting Aubrey/Maturin novels, a real "Boys Own Life" type tale, full of gunplay, cat & mouse feints & hearty comradeship. The most exciting aspect of it is that it all really happened (of course with different protagonists!). Learn about a forgotten campaign of the Napoleonic wars & enjoy yourself in the process! Read "The Mauritius Command"!
Rating: 
Summary: BETTER THAN HORNBLOWER
Review: AS A CHILD I READ ALL OF THE HORATIO HORNBLOWER SERIES AND I NEVER THOUGHT ANYONE WOULD EVER MATCH HIM. O'BRIAN IS AN ADULT'S HORNBLOWER WRITER. I DON'T THINK THAT I WOULD HAVE LIKED HIM WHEN I WAS A CHILD. AS AN ADULT I DON'T THINK HORATIO MEASURES UP TO JACK AUBREY.
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: Superb Action Thriller
Review: Based on the eight O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin books I've read so far, Mauritius Command has the most military excitement. Jack Aubrey's skills as a military strategist are put to a test- author O'Brian tutors the reader on naval strategy during that last great era of fighting ships of sail. Splendid!
Rating:
Summary: Another smash hit in the Aubrey-Maturin series.
Review: Based on the little known Mauritius campaign, Cpt. Aubrey
is given command of a flotila to capture Mauritus and Reunion
in the Indian Ocean from the French to stop France's harrsement of East Indian shipping. Aubrey rises to the occasion and with the help of his friend Dr.Maturin they
thwart Napoleon's dreams of Asian conquests. Stirring drama
as Aubrey takes on the French in a series of naval actions that are both basically historic and exciting. A must read
for devotees of this series.
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.
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