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4.17 AVERAGE
4.17 AVERAGE
2nd reading. On rereading my opinion of this book, and its three direct predecessors, is higher than before.
3rd reading 2020
3rd reading 2020
I am enthralled by this series of novels, but this one, The Wine Dark Sea, is where my interest was stretched, and only my loyalty kept me truly anticipating the reading. It's as if the writer takes us into his heart so far that he allows us to see his characters through long pages of little action, getting to know their lives as you would a cousin's who you had to spend a long summer vacation with, seeing them at a depth where not a lot has to happen to see new facets of their souls.
Great read with sea adventures, geology, politics and human nature all over the place. One looks a little differently at some of the revolutions when one thinks that political intrigue rather than idealism might have had a hand in it.
Faultless, as ever. The plotting was, perhaps, a little thin; but when it comes as part of such beautifully written prose, and interspersed with such fantastically observed events as the emergence of a new volcanic island, or Stephen's adventures in the Andes, I really can't bring myself to care. Only four books left in the series, though! I think I shall have to slow down my pace again. I find myself wanting to really draw this series out, to make it last.
adventurous
slow-paced
The one with the volcano.
Aubrey and Maturin's round the World journey continues, this time via the Andes (to which we will return). One of the stronger entries in the later series as O'Brian is clearly interested in the underlying history which brings the protagonists to South America.
Aubrey and Maturin's round the World journey continues, this time via the Andes (to which we will return). One of the stronger entries in the later series as O'Brian is clearly interested in the underlying history which brings the protagonists to South America.
Book sixteen of the Aubrey-Maturin series and book four of their five-book circumnavigation of the globe, The Wine-Dark Sea sees the Surprise move on from the Polynesian island of Moahu for the western shores of South America. In other words it’s another chapter of O’Brian’s giga-novel, and a fairly diffuse one. It begins with strange and unprecedented quirks of ocean behaviour and air pressure which both Aubrey and Maturin are at a loss to explain, but which the reader has probably figured out from the cover illustration, yet which nonetheless marvellously presents another unexpected wonder of the big wide watery world. We then encounter the French revolutionary from Moahu with his dangerously democratic ideas which come to influence the lower decks; Stephen’s mission to attempt to turn the government of Peru towards Britain rather than France; a dangerous escapade for Jack and some officers in a small boat; and probably the book’s most memorable chapter, a naturalising sojourn for Stephen in the Andes featuring llamas, condors, bromeliads and altitude-sickness-inducing heights.
“If you are as mistaken about the birds as you are about my head for heights, Molina will have no great burden to carry, at all,” reflected Stephen, who had often heard, each time with deeper dismay, of the spidery Inca bridges upon which intrepid Indians crossed torrents raging a thousand feet below them, even hauling immobilized animals over by means of a primitive windlass, the whole construction swaying wildly to and fro as even a single traveller reached the middle, the first false step being the last. “How long does it take to fall a thousand feet?” he asked himself, and as the troop set out he tried to make the calculation; but his arithmetical powers were and always had been weak. “Long enough to make an act of contrition, at all events,” he said, abandoning the answer of seven hours and odd seconds as absurd.
I think this is also the first of the novels I’ve read since revisiting Peter Weir’s 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which is both a better film and a better adaptation than I remembered. The Jack and Stephen of the film are not quite the Jack and Stephen of the books, and yet I still found the actors’ voices slipping into my internal narration as I read, and some uncharitable part of my brain almost wishes Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany’s careers would fall on hard times so they end up on Cameo and we can pay them to read out passages of dialogue.
“If you are as mistaken about the birds as you are about my head for heights, Molina will have no great burden to carry, at all,” reflected Stephen, who had often heard, each time with deeper dismay, of the spidery Inca bridges upon which intrepid Indians crossed torrents raging a thousand feet below them, even hauling immobilized animals over by means of a primitive windlass, the whole construction swaying wildly to and fro as even a single traveller reached the middle, the first false step being the last. “How long does it take to fall a thousand feet?” he asked himself, and as the troop set out he tried to make the calculation; but his arithmetical powers were and always had been weak. “Long enough to make an act of contrition, at all events,” he said, abandoning the answer of seven hours and odd seconds as absurd.
I think this is also the first of the novels I’ve read since revisiting Peter Weir’s 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which is both a better film and a better adaptation than I remembered. The Jack and Stephen of the film are not quite the Jack and Stephen of the books, and yet I still found the actors’ voices slipping into my internal narration as I read, and some uncharitable part of my brain almost wishes Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany’s careers would fall on hard times so they end up on Cameo and we can pay them to read out passages of dialogue.
After several years of returning to this series periodically, I'm now in the home stretch of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin tales. This is the sixteenth entry and the quality has not declined at all. In fact, The Wine-Dark Sea was one of the more interesting reads in this latter part of the long-running series.
We begin with Captain Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon and British intelligence agent Stephen Maturin aboard their privateer, the Surprise in the southern Pacific. They are pursuing an American privateer through the Great South Sea when things start to get weird. The sea turns a purple-red color and Aubrey notes that the sea "twitches" periodically. Even so experienced a seaman as Aubrey has never seen anything like it.
In the midst of the chase, the sea suddenly explodes about them, hurling debris into the air. It is an undersea volcano, and the rocks and other debris that are being sent into the air rain down on both ships, damaging them, injuring and killing sailors, and filling the sea with dead animals. When the explosions finally cease, Aubrey sees a new cone-shaped island having been formed by the volcano's eruption.
They are able to take the American privateer as a prize and they spend time repairing both ships as best they can. Then they continue on their way to Peru, where Maturin, in his guise as intelligence agent, will be attempting to foment a revolution to overthrow the current government.
His efforts meet with initial success, but then he is betrayed by a man who was on the American privateer (possibly its owner) and who had escaped into Lima. His betrayal puts Stephen in peril. Forewarned, he is able to flee, with the aid of friends who are descendants of the Incas, through the high, frozen wastes of the Andes, having sent word to Aubrey by Aubrey's illegitimate black son, Sam, who is a priest in Peru, that he will try to meet the Surprise in Valparaiso on the last day of the next month.
Actually, my favorite parts of the book were the descriptions of the volcanic eruption and its aftermath and of Stephen's time in Peru and the trip through the Andes. The description of the flora, fauna, geology, archaeology, and weather of the Andes was particularly fascinating to me. I may not be able to tell a studdingsail from a mizzenmast, but I can easily imagine the flight of an Andean Condor or the differences between guanacos, llamas, and vicunas, or the bromeliads of the high mountains, and the cleverness of the Incan engineers who made the roads through those mountains and designed the "Inca chair" which carried Stephen on the last part of his journey after he lost two toes to frostbite.
Even when Maturin makes his rendezvous with the Surprise and is reunited with his friends, the adventure is far from over. They will endure a breathtaking chase with American ships through stormy seas and icebergs south of Cape Horn, when the Surprise, hoping to capture more American prizes, suddenly finds itself outgunned and outmanned and must run for its life.
Having survived that test by the skin of their teeth, losing masts and sails and their rudder(!) in the process, they finally encounter aid in the form of a British ship captained by an old friend, and, thus, are able to say that they are truly "homeward bound" after their years-long voyage.
This book made me even more eager to read the last few entries in the series. I hope to finish it by the end of this year.
We begin with Captain Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon and British intelligence agent Stephen Maturin aboard their privateer, the Surprise in the southern Pacific. They are pursuing an American privateer through the Great South Sea when things start to get weird. The sea turns a purple-red color and Aubrey notes that the sea "twitches" periodically. Even so experienced a seaman as Aubrey has never seen anything like it.
In the midst of the chase, the sea suddenly explodes about them, hurling debris into the air. It is an undersea volcano, and the rocks and other debris that are being sent into the air rain down on both ships, damaging them, injuring and killing sailors, and filling the sea with dead animals. When the explosions finally cease, Aubrey sees a new cone-shaped island having been formed by the volcano's eruption.
They are able to take the American privateer as a prize and they spend time repairing both ships as best they can. Then they continue on their way to Peru, where Maturin, in his guise as intelligence agent, will be attempting to foment a revolution to overthrow the current government.
His efforts meet with initial success, but then he is betrayed by a man who was on the American privateer (possibly its owner) and who had escaped into Lima. His betrayal puts Stephen in peril. Forewarned, he is able to flee, with the aid of friends who are descendants of the Incas, through the high, frozen wastes of the Andes, having sent word to Aubrey by Aubrey's illegitimate black son, Sam, who is a priest in Peru, that he will try to meet the Surprise in Valparaiso on the last day of the next month.
Actually, my favorite parts of the book were the descriptions of the volcanic eruption and its aftermath and of Stephen's time in Peru and the trip through the Andes. The description of the flora, fauna, geology, archaeology, and weather of the Andes was particularly fascinating to me. I may not be able to tell a studdingsail from a mizzenmast, but I can easily imagine the flight of an Andean Condor or the differences between guanacos, llamas, and vicunas, or the bromeliads of the high mountains, and the cleverness of the Incan engineers who made the roads through those mountains and designed the "Inca chair" which carried Stephen on the last part of his journey after he lost two toes to frostbite.
Even when Maturin makes his rendezvous with the Surprise and is reunited with his friends, the adventure is far from over. They will endure a breathtaking chase with American ships through stormy seas and icebergs south of Cape Horn, when the Surprise, hoping to capture more American prizes, suddenly finds itself outgunned and outmanned and must run for its life.
Having survived that test by the skin of their teeth, losing masts and sails and their rudder(!) in the process, they finally encounter aid in the form of a British ship captained by an old friend, and, thus, are able to say that they are truly "homeward bound" after their years-long voyage.
This book made me even more eager to read the last few entries in the series. I hope to finish it by the end of this year.
“Like Jane Austen, O'Brian is really happiest working on two or three inches of ivory and turning to art the daily lives of three or four families in a locality—except that this village happens to be a wooden ship of war at the apogee of a great Navy's world sea-power in the days of sail, and famous for the skill and discipline of its officers and men.” - from the afterward by John Bayley. I would observe that this is emphasised when the novel leaves the water, and spends (for me) too long in the mountains of South America, but then finally (and rewardingly) sets sail for home...