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The Hundred Days
  
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The Hundred Days (Hardcover)

by Patrick O'Brian (Author)
3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 35.23
Price: CDN$ 34.89 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
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The Hundred Days + Yellow Admiral #18 + Blue At The Mizzen #20
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  • This item: The Hundred Days by Patrick O'Brian

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Product Description

From Amazon.com

The year is 1815, and Europe's most unpopular (not to mention tiniest) empire-builder has escaped from Elba. In The Hundred Days, it's up to Jack Aubrey--and surgeon-cum-spymaster Stephen Maturin--to stop Napoleon in his tracks. How? For starters, Aubrey and his squadron have been dispatched to the Adriatic coast, to keep Bonapartist shipbuilders from beefing up the French navy. Meanwhile, one Sheik Ibn Hazm is fomenting an Islamic uprising against the Allies. The only way to halt this maneuver is to intercept the sheik's shipment of gold--because in the Napoleonic era, as in our own, even the most ardent of mercenaries requires a salary.

The Hundred Days is the 19th (and, we are told, the penultimate) installment of O'Brian's epic. Like many of its predecessors, it features a fairly swashbuckling plot, complete with cannon fire, exotic disguises, and Aubrey's suspenseful, slow-motion pursuit of an Algerian xebek. Yet it never turns into a mere exercise in Hornblowerism. Partly this is due to O'Brian's delicate touch with character--the relationship between extroverted Aubrey and introverted Maturin has deepened with each book, and even Aubrey's reunion with his childhood companion Queenie Keith is full of novelistic nuance: "They sat smiling at one another. An odd pair: handsome creatures both, but they might have been of the same sex or neither." Nor does the author focus too exclusively on his dynamic duo. Indeed, The Hundred Days is very much a chronicle of a floating community, which Maturin describes as "his own village, his own ship's company, that complex entity so much more easily sensed than described: part of his natural habitat."

Finally, O'Brian shows his usual expertise in balancing the great events with the most minuscule ones. Other authors have written about battles at sea, and still others have recorded the rapid rise and fall of Napoleon's fortunes after his escape from confinement. But who else would give equal time--and an equal charge of delight--to Maturin's discovery of an anomalous nuthatch? --James Marcus --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.



From Publishers Weekly

The Aubrey-Maturin series (The Commodore, etc.) nears the two dozen mark the way it began, with colorful historical background, smooth plotting, marvelous characters and great style. The title refers to Napoleon's escape from Elba and brief return to power. Capt. Jack Aubrey must stop a Moorish galley, loaded with gold for Napoleon's mercenaries, from making its delivery. The action takes us into two seas and one ocean and continues nearly nonstop until the climax in the Atlantic. We're quickly reacquainted with the two heroes: handsome sea dog Jack Aubrey, by now a national hero, and Dr. Stephen Maturin, Basque-Irish ship's doctor, naturalist, English spy and hopelessly incompetent seaman. Nothing stays the same, alas: Jack has gained weight almost to obesity, and Stephen is desolated by the death of his dashing, beautiful wife?but they're still the best of friends, each often knowing what the other is thinking. The prose moves between the maritime sublime and the Austenish bon mot ("a man generally disliked is hardly apt to lavish good food and wine on those who despise him, and Ward's dinners were execrable"). There are some favorite old characters, notably Aubrey's steward, Preserved Killick: "ill-faced, ill-tempered, meagre, atrabilious, shrewish" and thoroughly amusing. Chief among entertaining newcomers is Dr. Amos Jacob, a Cainite Jew ("they derive their descent from the Kenites, who themselves have Abel's brother Cain as their common ancestor"), who comes from a family of jewel merchants and has an encyclopedic grasp of Hebrew, Arabic and Turkish languages (and politics). Jacob is as expert as Stephen at spying and even more of a landlubber. O'Brian continues to unroll a splendid Turkish rug of a saga, and if it seems unlikely that the sedentary Stephen would hunt lions in the Atlas mountains (with the Dey of Algiers!), O'Brian brings off even this narrative feat with aplomb.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews

48 Reviews
5 star:
 (11)
4 star:
 (12)
3 star:
 (9)
2 star:
 (7)
1 star:
 (9)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.2 out of 5 stars (48 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most helpful customer reviews

 
5.0 out of 5 stars What a weird collection..., May 31 2002
By "heavypen" (Orange, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hundred Days. (Hardcover)
A couple of years later and I stroll in and see such a weird collection of remarks! It seems that people either love this installment or absolutely loathe it. By my rating, you can see that I enjoyed it immensely. I think that O'Brian lived up to his reputation as a sophisticated storyteller. Yes, Diana's death is a mere mention - but the author creates such a deeply painful upset that feels very real - we grieve with Stephen from the shock - and if we are open to it, we appreciate the story even more. And yes, Bonden's demise is equally jarring, but that's life at sea (especially during that time). My one critique of O'Brian - there should have been more death among Aubrey's and Maturin's closest friends and followers - that is, if history were followed more closely. So - to the naysayers I say -"you are heard, but you do not speak for everybody." I love this book as I love the entire series.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining as always, Mar 4 2000
By A Customer
I love great historical fiction and O'Brian's Napoleonic era novels, although not as timely as more recently set novels like the Civil War's "Cold Mountain" or WWII's "The Triumph and the Glory", capture the era in magnificent fashion. But no matter what type of fiction you like you should read the Aubrey/Maturin novels, they are wonderful, finely-crafted examples of the story-telling art. If you want to learn how to write a novel, read Patrick O'Brian, If you love to read great novels, he's your man too.
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2.0 out of 5 stars Scrub, Feb 3 2000
By Pluma Seeker (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hundred Days. (Hardcover)
About a third of the way through I thought, "O'Brian has died and they're having someone ghost-write this!" Stephen and Jack are mere caricatures. The bright, witty dialogue is missing and I just felt that some one had 'played me the flat' and that person was an awful scrub.
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 		 Most recent customer reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars No Hornblower
I have read all the volumes of Hornblower last year and decided to give O'brien a try. I don't know if all his books are like this but this is a joke compared to Forrester.
Published on Mar 20 2000 by T. H. Plat

4.0 out of 5 stars Making what one can of the end...
While some of the reviews here have lambasted "The Hundred Days", after taking a step back and looking at it on its own rather than in the spot light pointed at his... Read more
Published on Jan 12 2000 by Perry Clark

1.0 out of 5 stars an utter disappointment
Don't read this book. If I could, I would give it zero stars. O'Brian's series of Aubrey/Maturin novels are among the greatest works of historical fiction ever written, but the... Read more
Published on Jan 8 2000 by Buck Bauer

4.0 out of 5 stars Another really good O'Brian novel.
I finished reading "The Hundred Days", number nineteen in Patrick O'Brian's "The Aubrey-Mautrin Novels" series. Another excellent novel. Read more
Published on Jan 5 2000

1.0 out of 5 stars Beating the Deadline
I, as countless others, noticed within pages that this book did not have the heft, color, culture or beauty of the past entries. Read more
Published on Dec 16 1999 by michael thatcher

3.0 out of 5 stars A Fainter Smell of Sea Air
As a dyed-in-the-wool Aubrey/Maturin devotée, and after devouring the first eighteen installments in this magnificent saga, I was quite disappointed in "The Hundred... Read more
Published on Dec 15 1999

3.0 out of 5 stars Two Books in One
Much of what other disappointed O'Brian fans have said about The Hundred Days is certainly true, but I think I noticed something unusual which may be a clue to "what... Read more
Published on Dec 13 1999 by David M Gottlieb

3.0 out of 5 stars Two Books in One
Much of what other disappointed O'Brien fans have said about The Hundred Days is certainly true, but I think I noticed something unusual which may be a clue to "what... Read more
Published on Dec 13 1999 by David M Gottlieb

3.0 out of 5 stars O'Brian becalmed
THE HUNDRED DAYS is the 20th in O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series. New readers are likely to be disappointed, as character development in earlier novels is essential to... Read more
Published on Sep 6 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars A hypothesis
I have great respect for Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, and this contribution is no exception. Read more
Published on Jul 9 1999

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