I recently finished reading The Golden Ocean, by O’Brian, and enjoyed the book. I thought the first four chapters were a bit slow, but the ship was under way, it seemed the author switched his focus from the characters to the voyage and the story became much more engaging. I did feel a bit cheated in the end, when the entire voyage from the Philippines to England was glossed over in one chapter.
I’m in the middle of another book right now, but I’ll finish it soon, and am casting about for more reading material.
I see that O’Brian has written several other sea-faring books. An entire series, in fact, called the Aubrey-Maturin series (I have no idea where the name comes from, but I am sure that will be revealed to me if I read the series). My question is: is that series worth reading? Are the books as slow to develop as The Golden Ocean? Has anyone out there read the series?
I haven’t read The Golden Ocean but I’ve read the entire Aubrey-Maturin series. I feel that if you liked Forester’s Hornblower or Cornwell’s Sharpe, you’ll like Aubrey and Maturin.
If you’ve not read Forester or Cornwell as yet, you’re likely to wear out your library card
Put me squarely in the “read them” camp. I have not read The Golden Ocean, but I have heard that it is like Aubrey (ship’s captain)-Maturin (surgeon) lite.
It took me about 2 1/2 books to really get into the series. Once I did, I read 20 books in five weeks. And I went to Collioure, where O’Brian wrote them. For my money, it’s as good as any recent English language fiction.
Read them, by all means. Patrick O’Brian was one of the very few authors where I could not bear to hold out for the publication of the paperback version.
These books aren’t your typical escapism, they are great literature. The protagonists’ aspirations and fear and people’s relationships within a very hierarchical society and in the narrow confines of shipboard are very done - you really feel with even a lot of the minor figures - but not by bald statements but by hints where you gradually realize what happens.
There are 20 books, beginning with “Master and Commander”, a novel of warfare by a smallish British warship in the Western Mediterranean. If you don’t want to commit to the whole series you could try “Post Captain” for a novel about early 1800’s society (the kind of setting that Jane Austen wrote about), or “Desolation Island” (my favourite) for a dramatic sea story of trial, catastrophes and intelligence schemes in the Antarctic Ocean.
What tschild said. Great, great, books, although there was a definite slide in quality with the last few. Personally, I think there’s a lot to be said to starting with Post Captain - that’s what I did, by pure accident, and I think it gets you into the series as it developed better than Master and Commander, although I like it , too.
