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A review by sadie_slater
The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian
3.0
At the opening of The Mauritius Command, Jack Aubrey has married his Sophie and is living in a damp cottage with her, their twin daughters and her mother; a situation from which he is rescued by Stephen Maturin, arriving to offer him not only a ship but the opportunity to act as commodore of a small squadron, waging a campaign to capture the islands of Mauritius and La Réunion from the French. Like all the Aubrey/Maturin novels this mixes careful naval detail (in his author's note, O'Brien explains that the whole campaign is based on real naval actions) with social comedy and carefully observed human drama. Stephen's political influence has clearly continued to develop since HMS Surprise, as we now find him assigned as a political adviser to the whole mission; meanwhile, Jack has to learn how to command a squadron and not just a ship.
This was a more sombre book than I had expected; despite his famous luck, Jack doesn't take naturally to a more strategic level of command and the campaign involves significant losses, while one of the main supporting characters is the rather sad Lord Clonfert, who is clearly haunted by his failure to match up to Jack's achievements in what looks very like a form of Imposter Syndrome. (Mental illness is very much a theme of the novel, with the introduction of the surgeon McAdam whose interest is far more in diseases of the mind than those of the body, and as well as Clonfert's Imposter Syndrome we see Stephen's growing depression.) It also didn't seem to have quite as much of the interaction between Jack and Stephen that I loved in the first three books, as for much of the time the two are separated and going about their own business in the campaign. Still, I enjoyed reading it, and thanks to a lucky find in the Oxfam bookshop the other week I have the next four waiting to be read at some convenient point.
This was a more sombre book than I had expected; despite his famous luck, Jack doesn't take naturally to a more strategic level of command and the campaign involves significant losses, while one of the main supporting characters is the rather sad Lord Clonfert, who is clearly haunted by his failure to match up to Jack's achievements in what looks very like a form of Imposter Syndrome. (Mental illness is very much a theme of the novel, with the introduction of the surgeon McAdam whose interest is far more in diseases of the mind than those of the body, and as well as Clonfert's Imposter Syndrome we see Stephen's growing depression.) It also didn't seem to have quite as much of the interaction between Jack and Stephen that I loved in the first three books, as for much of the time the two are separated and going about their own business in the campaign. Still, I enjoyed reading it, and thanks to a lucky find in the Oxfam bookshop the other week I have the next four waiting to be read at some convenient point.