Thirteen Gun Salute #13 [Paperback]

Will Napoleon Bonaparte form an alliance with the Malay princes of the South China Sea? Not if Jack Aubrey can help it. Conveying a diplomatic mission to the Sultan's court, Aubrey and company must also contend with orangutans, typhoons, and a squadron of wily French envoys. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

The 18th in O'Brian's Jack Aubrey series will please current fans and likely make new ones. Newly rich Aubrey ( The Letter of Marque ), again a Royal Navy captain and even a "rotten-borough" M.P., is given command of the frigate Diane with orders to bring king's envoy Fox to conclude a treaty with the sultan of Borneo before Napoleon does. Aboard is Jack's friend Dr. Maturin, English secret agent and avid naturalist. After a placid trip (via Antarctica) and some stormy local politics (involving two English traitors and the sultan's catamite) the treaty is made. Fox's growing arrogance breeds ill will and when homeward-bound Diane hits a reef Jack gladly sends the envoy ahead in a cutter. O'Brian's style has been compared with Jane Austen's: even the dinners (in country house, London, ship's mess, sultan's palace, Buddhist monastery) are distinguished wittily. Perhaps the most charming segment is Maturin's idyllic stay in a remote valley, where he blissfully encounters and studies a variety of tame exotic beasts.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

O'Brian, author of biographies, novels, and various tales, has again produced a work of sea fiction with Jack Aubrey and his close friend and physician Stephen Maturin as main characters ( The Letter of Marque, LJ 8/90). Set in the waters around the Dutch East Indies during the Napoleonic War, this adventure combines diplomacy, early 19th-century science, and life aboard His Majesty's Frigate Diane as Aubrey attempts to thwart French designs in these waters. This is sea fiction with excellent technical detail for readers with a sophisticated vocabulary. Recommended for public libraries.
- Harold N. Boyer, Marple P.L., Broomall, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Norton's admirable attempt to achieve for O'Brian in this country at least some semblance of the success he has enjoyed in England continues apace with the release of this 13th adventure of Captain Jack Aubrey and his crew of British seamen during the Napoleonic Wars, in conjunction with trade paperback reprintings of two earlier books in the series (H.M.S. Surprise, The Mauritius Command). At this stage in his career, Aubrey commands the Surprise, a private man-of-war licensed to do battle with enemy warships on behalf of the Crown. He remains a man whose great capabilities and raw energy while at sea are often nullified by an inability to cope while on land, and so it is that captain and crew set sail most precipitously for South America after a lengthy stay ashore, at least in part so that Jack will make no social or political errors that might set back his efforts to be restored to the Royal Navy. Aboard as always is Dr. Stephen Maturin-- Aubrey's closest friend, ship's surgeon, and British spy--the character who provides an intellectual counterpoint to Jack's more physical presence. While the Surprise goes on its appointed rounds, however, Aubrey and Maturin undertake another assignment- -delivering a British envoy to the Malaysian Islands to negotiate a treaty there in competition with the French (a mission that, happily, requires that Jack's precious Navy rank be returned him). The story's the thing, of course, but the ultimate appeal of the Aubrey/Maturin adventures lies in O'Brian's delicious old- fashioned prose, the wonderfully complex sentences that capture the feel of the sea and the culture of the great warships, all the while sketching with apparent accuracy and truth the early- 19th-century world. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'!full of the energy that comes from a writer having struck a vein! Patrick O'Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars.' James Hamilton- Paterson 'You are in for the treat of your lives. Thank God for Patrick O'Brian: his genius illuminates the literature of the English language, and lightens the lives of those who read him.' Kevin Myers, Irish Times 'In a highly competitive field it goes straight to the top. A real first-rater.' Mary Renault 'I never enjoyed a novel about the sea more. It is not only that the author describes the handling of a ship of 1800 with an accuracy that is as comprehensible as it is detailed, a remarkable feat in itself. Mr O'Brian's three chief characters are drawn with no less depth of sympathy than the vessels he describes, a rare achievement save in the greatest writers of this genre. It deserves the widest readership.' Irish Times

For all Jack Aubrey's life he has triumphed, often sensationally, over the dangers of the sea and the violence of the enemy. But his rashness, his guilelessness, his indiscretion have, time and time again, enabled his rivals to prevent him reaping his just rewards. The nadir was reached in The Reverse of the Medal when, the victim of a skilful frame-up, he was convicted of fraud and struck off the Navy List just as he was coming within sight of flag rank. The subsequent exposure of the conspiracy, coupled with his brilliant success in command of a privateer, had brought him to a position where their lordships were more or less bound to reinstate him.

This, as the present book opens, they have done, and he and his old friend Dr Maturin are sailing on a secret mission with a hand-picked crew, most of them shipmates from the adventures and lucrative voyages of earlier years.

Patrick O`Brian, one of our greatest contemporary novelists, is the author of the acclaimed Aubrey-Maturin tales and the biographer of Joseph Banks and Picasso. His first novel, Testimonies, and his Collected Short Stories have recently been republished by HarperCollins. He has translated many works from French into English, among them the novels and memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir and the first volume of Jean Lacouture`s biography of Charles de Gaulle. In 1995 he was the first recipient of the Heywood Hill Prize for a lifetime`s contribution to literature. In the same year he was also awarded the CBE. In 1997 he was given an honorary doctorate of letters by Trinity College, Dublin. Patrick O`Brian died in January 2000.