Please see my comments on Vol. 1, Master and Commander. ( )

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Jack and Stephen enjoy another remarkable adventure: I absolutely adore this series, but in some dissent from my fellow Aubrey-Maturin fans I find this to be one of the least interesting books in the series, though it has one of the most compelling endings in that leaves the crew of the Diane stranded on a deserted island in the South Pacific. Until that shocking and unresolved event, I found that the novel had less of interest than nearly any other in the series. Though the visit to Pulo Prabang was interesting, it contained (except for the visit to the ruins of a Hindu Temple) less of the compelling historical detail that characterized the other books. In previous volumes, the places that Jack and Stephen visit come alive in an almost tangible manner. Here one gets little sense of what Pulo Prabang (apart from the temple) looked or felt like. The other thing that makes his books so marvelous are the magnificent character studies. This one eventually makes good on this feature of the series, but only towards the very end, as the weirdness of Fox's personality comes out. But there is far less of the complex interpersonal interplay that enlivens the other books. Finally, until the shipwreck at the end, there is simply very little excitement in this one. Compared to the previous books, I find that this one simply does not stand out.

Not that it is not still an utter delight and completely satisfying for fans of the series. The aforementioned visit by Stephen to the ruins of a Hindu temple, in the company of an orangutan, is one of the most remarkable moments in the entire series. The shipwreck at the end is as marvelously told as it is shocking to read (one simply cannot credit that the Diane enjoyed such a short lifespan). Also, there is a deep sense of satisfaction when Ledward and Wray, the villains through most of the sequence, finally get theirs, and the manner in which their bodies are disposed is quite shocking. Nonetheless, these were for me moments that reminded me of how consistently I found most of the previous books, instead of how intermittently interesting I found this one.

Interestingly, this is one of the few novels in the series in which the title of the subsequent novels is mentioned. I remember when I first read these books and how little sense I could make of the titles. In many of them the phrase that provides the title can occur well towards the end, such as THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL. But here in THE THIRTEEN-GUN SALUTE (which itself is one of the more ironical in the series, referring to Fox's rather pathetic sense of self importance) the phrase "the nutmeg of consolation" appears, which provides the title for the next novel.

One virtue O'Brian possesses as a writer (among many virtues) is that of understatement. In a genre in which the tendency is to lay things on a bit thick, O'Brian if any thing leaves things deliciously thin. There is no better instance of this than in the fate of Ledward and Wray. Nowhere does O'Brian explicitly explain what happened to them, but instead leaves us to surmise that they were shot by Fox. It is an easy conclusion to make, given Fox's constant target practice in the novel and the statement by Maturin that they were killed by rifle shot (Stephen prefers the pistol). This restraint is one of the things that make his writing so immensely satisfying.

En av de svagare böckerna i O'Brians serie om Aubrey och Maturin, om än inte alls dålig. ( )

There's some wonderful writing in this book--the first chapter, in particular, is a tour-de-force of historical reconstruction--but I find the book less than satisfying. ( )