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Almost three decades after commencing his maritime epic with Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian is still at it. The 20th episode, Blue at the Mizzen, is another swashbuckling adventure on the high seas, complete with romantic escapades from smoggy London to Sierra Leone, diplomacy, espionage, the intricacies of warfare, and imperial brinksmanship. As always, these events are bound up in the ongoing friendship between two officers of the Royal Navy. Jack Aubrey is the naval captain, bold yet compassionate, innovative yet cautious, as fearless in war as he is bumbling in affairs of the heart and household. His boon companion Stephen Maturin is the ship's surgeon--and additionally a spy for the British government, a wealthy Catalonian aristocrat, a doting Irish father, and an avid naturalist.
That may sound like a lot to keep track of. However, it's not necessary to carry around a scorecard or ship's roster while reading Blue at the Mizzen. The ostensible issue is whether Jack will finally be promoted to Admiral of the Blue. But long before he hears any word from the Napoleonic era's equivalent of Personnel, he loses half his crew to desertion, his ship undergoes a disastrous collision, and the entire company comes close to perishing in the ice-choked seas off Cape Horn. Meanwhile, the widowed Maturin issues a surprising proposal of marriage to a beautiful, mud-bespattered fellow naturalist while trekking through an African mangrove swamp. (The two lovebirds happen to be searching for a rare variant of Caprimulgus longipennis, the long-tailed nightjar, which they hope to surprise in full mating plumage.)
Still, this is hardly a plot-driven novel. O'Brian takes time to get anywhere, and invariably enjoys the journey more than the arrival. So even as we get constant hints of the climax to come--Jack's spectacular naval action on behalf of the infant Republic of Chile--we don't mind hearing about the nuances of shipboard existence or the secret life of the white-faced tree duck. We're treated, for example, to this snippet about managed care, circa 1816: Poll, Maggie and a horse-leech from the starboard watch have been administering enemas to the many, many cases of gross surfeit that have now replaced the frostbites, torsions, and debility of the recent past, the very recent past. Strong, fresh, seal-meat has not its equal for upsetting the seaman's metabolism: he is much better kept on biscuits, Essex cheese, and a very little well-seethed salt pork--kept on short commons. And we're grateful! We can only hope that the elderly author will favor us with at least one more novel, so that his avid followers can avoid their own form of short commons. Life without Aubrey and Maturin would be a deprivation indeed. --Andrew Himes
From Publishers Weekly
With bittersweet pleasure, readers may deem this 20thAand possibly finalAinstallment in O'Brian's highly regarded series featuring Capt. Jack Aubrey of the English Royal Navy and Stephen Maturin, ship's doctor, the best of the lot. Post-Waterloo, the frigate Surprise sets sail to South America as a "hydrographical vessel," ostensibly to survey the Straits of Magellan and Chile's southern coast. In fact, Jack and Stephen are to offer help to the Chilean rebels trying to break free from Spain. On their way down the coast of West Africa, romance blossoms for both men. Jack's liaison (with his cousin, Isobel, in Gibraltar) is brief, but widower Stephen's passion for Christine Wood, a naturalist who has been his correspondent for some time, turns serious in Sierra Leone. The doctor's correspondence with Christine begins with accounts of his explorations in Africa and South America, referencing, say, an "anomalous nuthatch" or the "etymology of doldrum," but they're quite wonderful love letters, functioning as a chorus to the action. Once in Chile, despite the conflict between opposing rebel camps, Jack leads a successful raid on a treasure fort in Valdivia, followed by the seizure of a Peruvian frigate to be turned over to the Chilean rebels, triumphs that reap him a just reward; at that point, readers will learn the title's significance. Throughout, familiar characters abound and entertain, especially the amusingly nasty steward, Killick, and Stephen's "loblolly girl" (nurse), Poll Skeeping. And finally, there is Horatio Hanson, bastard son of a nobleman, who comes on board as a midshipman, a dashing young foil for the ship's elders. O'Brian has rightfully been compared to Jane Austen, but one wonders if even she would have done justice to "those extraordinary hollow dwellings, sometimes as beautiful as they were comfortless." To use one of Stephen's favorite expressions, "What joy!" Agent, Georges Borchardt. (Nov.) FYI: Over three million copies of the books in the Aubrey/Maturin series have been sold. O'Brian will make two mid-November appearances in New York, one already sold out. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Here is the 20th in the series presenting the escapades of Cap. Jack Aubrey of the British Royal Navy ship Surprise and his longtime companion, naval surgeon Stephen Maturin. O'Brian belongs to that select group of historical novelists who seem to write for their own audiences; his fans will greet the present volume eagerly. But for readers unacquainted with the series, Blue at the Mizzen would not be the best way to be introduced to O'Brian and his seaworthy heroes; one needs the background of the previous volumes to connect with all the characters. When we last climbed aboard the Surprise, Aubrey, Maturin, and crew had helped frustrate Napoleon in his plan to conquer Europe. In this seafaring adventure, we are off to Chile to help Bernardo O'Higgins and Jos? de San Martin in their struggle to rid the country of Spanish domination. O'Brian never races through his stories; he drags them crabwise toward their predictable denouements. The current book is loaded to the gunwales with turgid dialog, ornate prose, and episodes that seem pasted on rather than built into the narrative. But that is part of O'Brian's appeal to his fans. Buy for them.-AA.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Amanda Foreman
After a spell in the doldrums O'Brian has presented his readers with a shining jewel. Blue at the Mizzen is an intricate, multifaceted work--one of those rare novels that actually bear up under close scrutiny.
The New Yorker, 8 November 1999
The book contains the usual splendid blend of nautical detail and political intrigue, savage battles and naturalists' musing, all ratified by O'Brian's seemingly effortless ability to deploy the vocabulary and idioms of the time.
John Ferguson, Boston Globe
O'Brian is not that hard a taste to acquire, but he is very tough to shake. . . . [The Aubrey/Maturin series/ is a great work.
From AudioFile
This abridgment continues the late O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series. It takes the pair of up-and-coming Royal Navy stars to the post-Napoleonic independence struggles in South America. Full of action, historical detail, and unforgettable characters, this work is handsomely performed by Tim Pigott-Smith. The experienced actor has a stately voice that does justice to the dialogue and is splendid when performing the battle scenes. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
Scuttlebutt has it that this twentieth tale of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin is the last. If so, they are sailing into their literary sunset on a high note. Jointly they survive a drunken rampage by the Surprise's crew, a mass desertion, a collision at sea that sends the frigate turned surveying vessel back to England for repairs, and the onboard entrance of one Horatio Hanson, a midshipman patronized and possibly fathered by the duke of Clarence. They then set sail southward, where in Africa Stephen discovers that he is ready to give his heart again, if only the lady, naturalist Christine Wood, is willing to accept it. On the other side of the Atlantic, he and Jack struggle around the Horn, surviving only by managing to find a seal colony and stuffing the holds with seal meat. Finally, they enter the Pacific in time to be up to their waistcoats in the intrigues, on land and sea, of the Chilean rebellion against Spain. In the end, Jack Aubrey is promoted to rear admiral of the Blue. Meanwhile, his creator has long since earned the rank of admiral of the fleet on the seas of literature. Roland Green
From Kirkus Reviews
O'Brian announced long ago that he hoped to write 20 volumes in his series centering on the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and featuring Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. Along the way, he has built up a huge British following, if a lesser one in the States, although American reviewers find the series splendidly literate. And so here is volume 20, which finds Napoleon defeated at Waterloo and Jack and now-widower Stephen at Gibralter, sent on a mission to release Spain's naval stranglehold on Chile and help Chile gain her independence. Nearly half the duos crew, however, a ragtag bunch of the stupid and least-skilled, has deserted. And an accident in the roaring darkness as the Surprise sets forth requires that it be put up for repairs. During this period Stephen falls in love with Christine Wood, a naturalist, and asks for her hand in marriage. The journey around Cape Horn to Chile takes the Surprise through the most southerly and icy of horrors. Meanwhile, Jack has the nurturing of Midshipman Horatio Hanson, the engaging bastard son of a future king of England, to think about. The climax comes when the vastly outmanned and outnumbered Surprise attacks the Spanish fleet. Escape at its most intelligent and demanding. Is this the farewell Aubrey/Maturin novel? Not very likely, with the gingery addition of Horatio Hanson to the mix. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Neil Paulson, Denver Post
[O'Brian is] better than anybody at historical fiction...[He] is as able and graceful with the English language as a writer can be.
BookPage, J.W. Foster, November 1999
This is a work of genius, and in the face of its inevitable end, I can only think with pleasure at the now 20 volumes on my shelf.
John Skow, Time
Not one of those overweening lists and counterlists of 100 greatest novels that provoked such harrumphing...mentioned the remarkable British novelist Patrick O'Brian. This, his beguiled readers could argue, demeans not O'Brian but the lists.
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