This book rocks. I loved, loved, loved the ending. In fact I had "21" checked out from the library and was determined to get through that book once I had read the previous 20 (straight through--I'm a first-timer), but I liked the ending of "Blue at the Mizzen" so much that I didn't want to mess it up by reading just three chapters of the next book that O'Brian never got to finish.

Would not recommend reading this, though, without reading the first 19 books in the series... ( )

Despite all my best efforts at procrastination and dragging things out as much as possible, I finished the series this evening at about five thirty, before flopping back in my seat with a sigh. Well. Now what am I going to do? I don't think I'll ever find another series which could win my heart as thoroughly as the Aubrey-Maturin one did. Prose, dialogue, characterisation, period detail—all calculated to make me wish that O'Brian had had a chance to finish the twenty-first book, and to keep going for many more. Still, at least the last complete work which we have was a beautiful, flowing indulgence which ends on a supremely optimistic note—Jack hoisting his flag at last, Stephen with the chance of great happiness in his future—and it's a lovely place to leave our pair ( )

Book lovers can become addicted. To authors, like Zane Grey or John Irving. To genres, like science fiction or westerns or mysteries. Or to series. I was addicted to Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, waiting expectantly for each new title, rereading earlier ones more than once, hoping that the elderly O’Brian would live to complete his series—though there is some doubt that he ever had a culminating novel in mind. Blue at the Mizzen (W. W. Norton, 1999), #20, was the last one published before his death on January 2, 2000. His publisher’s eulogy called him “a writer of breathtaking erudition, [who] evoked in complete and dazzling detail an entire world—that of the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.”

J. W. Foster was also an addicted reader, even going for the cookbook based on the series: “anyone for soused pig face?” He used his review of Blue at the Mizzen for Bookpage (the familiar review you can pick up at many bookstores) as an occasion to assess the whole series. I’m permitting myself to use a long quote from his review, partly because it expresses my admiration for O’Brian precisely, but also because Foster seems such a good representative of Aubrey-Maturin addicts. An attorney in Columbia, South Carolina, he describes himself as an avid sailor and equestrian. Obviously a sensitive and sensible reader, he is not a professional litterateur. Here’s what he says, summing up O’Brian’s versatility:

“His erudition . . . extends to the natural history of mammals, insects, and birds, to the ethnography of more cultures than I can count, to astronomy and navigational mathematics, to vintages of 18th-century wines [not to mention food, music, and laudanum], to naval tactics and practices, and to the truths of the human heart. We grow to know these fictional characters and to admire their foibles and courage so much that they become old, valued friends. And here, I suppose, is the secret of O'Brian's art: that his genuine hard work at mastering and relating to us a body of arcane knowledge makes us trust him enough to listen to what he has to say about friendship, patriotism, courage, and love.”
[ http://www.bookpage.com/9911bp/fictio... ]

According to a member of a Jane Austen Society, the Aubrey Maturin series “have been likened to the sequential novels of Trollope and Anthony Powell, but the comparison that pleased O’Brian most was to Jane Austen. He revered her as the finest of all English novelists and kept early editions of her works near him while he wrote.” Indeed, the comparison of O’Brian to Austen became almost a cliche in reviews of his work, but it is apt not only because of his sensitivity to the social milieu he depicted but also because of his refined style of understatement.

Jack Aubrey is the heroic “master and commander” of the series, but I identity with Stephen Maturin. So did O’Brian, I’m told. A somewhat frail and awkward man, he has trouble even boarding the sailing vessels on which he serves without mishap. A bold but unconventional surgeon, he is a quiet, secretive companion, playing the cello to Aubrey’s violin, serving as an unpaid but diligent spy, aligning himself with his rebellious Catalan compatriots in Spain, and devoting himself to his avocation as a naturalist, a protegee and field agent for Joseph Banks (the historic British naturalist of whom O’Brian wrote a scholarly biography). Of course, one also follows the ups and downs of Maturin’s ardent love affair, too—but I’ll let you read the series to learn about that.

By the time of Blue at the Mizzen, the Napoleonic wars have drawn to a close. Napoleon is safely exiled on St. Helena. How will this affect the career of an officer in the British Navy? How will it provide adventure and suspense for readers of O’Brian novels? Never fear. Both the officer in his navy and the addicted reader of the novels fare quite well.

Aubrey and Maturin, after a collision in the night and a long delay for repairs, are sent on a mission to Chile, to offer assistance to the rebels against Spain. A treacherous pass around Cape Horn, tensions within the Chilean naval command, and an heroic encounter with the Spanish fleet maintain a brisk pace and lead to an ironic but satisfying ending.

And O’Brian’s prose style keeps pace too. He is strong and direct when the occasion demands that kind of language, but he can be leisurely and playful, too. Just try diagramming this sentence. It comes at a point when a bright November morning has dawned in the Southern hemisphere. Are you ready for this? Only one sentence, mind you.

“The dear topgallant breeze had chased away any hint of mist the night might have left and this was a light-filled day with a deep blue sky from horizon to horizon – a transparent air that allowed small details to be seen a great way off, and although when the sun reached his zenith – the exact height to be measured by every soul aboard who could command a sextant, quadrant or backstaff – his warmth might be troublesome, but euphroes were already at hand for the awmings that would moderate his zeal, and while the bosun and his mates were laying out the intricacies of their lines, fore and after, Jack Aubrey stood leaning on the elegant taffrail of the Surprise, gazing somewhat eastward of her wash at the boat pulling towards her from the vessel registered as Isaac Newton but universally called the Lisbon packet, that having been her vocation before her owner (as unlucky in cards as he was in love) sold her to a penurious entomologist who, having inherited a prodigious fortune, indulged himself and his colleagues of the Royal Society in an equally prodigious voyage.”

What fun the author is having with us: clipping along like a ship on vigorous waves, he sails along through clauses within clauses, n-dashes and parentheses, appositives and series, parallelisms and a personification, participial phrases and nominative absolutes. And every once in a while there is a splash of vocabulary to demand a midshipman’s attention: from sextant to backstaff, from euphroes to taffrails, from penurious entomologist to prodigious fortune (just a little alliteration and multisyllabic Latinate stateliness, to clear the mind), ending with the quaint repetition in a prodigious voyage.

Sail on, sail on!

Understand, you don’t get such exhilarating linguistic weather all that often, and when you do you know that the Jack Aubrey within old Patrick O’Brian is winking at you and the Stephen Maturin within him is responding quietly but exultantly as he might when he espies “two black-necked swans flying steadily southward, quite low over the water, so low that he could hear the rhythmic beating of their wings.”

What does the title of this particular novel signify? Ah, you have to read all the way to the penultimate page to find that out. I think O’Brian must have known that this might be the last Aubrey/Maturin novel he would finish. I can almost see him sniffing his brandy.