Desolation Island

So far one of my favorite of the Aubrey–Maturin series. The tension builds in waves until they tower above our mizzen-peak and we free-fall into the valley, only to be brought up again even higher on the next. Character development may be minimal in the series's titular characters, but each is explored more deeply than before, with a healthy dose of Le Carré-esque thrill throughout. A thumping good read to help one through a bitter winter.

If you could read but one Aubrey/Maturin novel, this is the one to read if you want to learn what happens to allegiances under pressure.

Desolation Island is my favorite of the series so far, deploying all the elements of the series with care and precision. At the start of the book, both Maturin and Aubrey are suffering from success on shore. Stephen has become despondent over love, addicted to laudanum, and is in the bad lights of British intelligence. Jack's family is going well, but he's losing money to card-sharks, con-artists, and horse speculators. The solution is simple, a voyage in the HMS Leopard to Australia to either reinstate or remove Governor Bligh, who's suffered another mutiny, and to transport suspect spy Louisa Wogan to Botany Bay.

The main action of the book takes place in the roaring 40s. The Leopard encounters the implacable and competently handled show more Dutch ship of the line Waakzaamheid. Jack flees from a battle that would destroy him, a tense chase that tests every ounce of seamanship both captains have, and ends when a lucky shot demasts the Waakzaamheid and causes it to founder with all hands.

The Leopard is little better off, as Jack is wounded, and the ship itself strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. Half the crew take to the boats, and Jack manages to bring the survivors to the extremely isolated Kerguelen Islands. There Maturin embarks in both naturalism and espionage, and the chance arrival of an American whaler provides a chance to effect needed repairs, and Maturin's schemes, at the cost of Louisa Wogan and a potential diplomatic incident. show less

After quite a long break from them (entirely unintentional), I turned this week to Patrick O'Brian's fifth Aubrey-Maturin novel, Desolation Island. Possibly my favorite of the series so far, this one has the daring duo transporting felons to Australia, including a mysteriously alluring female spy and her erstwhile stowaway companion. Naturally, the trip's not a smooth one: an epidemic decimates the crew, a powerful Dutch ship is out for blood, and tremendous natural hazards await in the waters of the Antarctic.

A good mix of action and counter-espionage, with O'Brian's usual good characterization (after a while you can really feel the shifting moods of the crew), and another fun treatment of early natural history, with Maturin taking show more every possible opportunity to observe breeding albatrosses, mosses, and other zoological and botanical sights (a blue whale even makes a cameo appearance).

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/04/book-review-desolation-island.html show less

Desolation Island (the fifth in the series) seems in many ways like the archetypical Aubrey-Maturin novel, and maybe that is why apparently the bulk of the movie Master and Commander (which I have never watched, so I’m going by hearsay here) was based on it. It has everything admirers of the series (and honestly – who, once they have navigated past the rocky cliffs of the first volume, would not admire this series?) love about it, and all of it even more perfectly balanced out against each other than it was in HMS Surprise.

True, there is not as much in the way of naval battles as there was in some other volumes, but there is an edge-of-your-seat naval chase sequence that is likely to leave the reader breathless, there is a lot of show more quality time spend with familiar characters, there are some interesting new ones introduced and there are what I consider O’Brian’s most beautiful descriptions of the sea yet.

The sea is a very rewarding subject for the visual arts, presumably (speaking as someone, mind you, who has not the first clue about the visual arts) because it is on the very borderline between represenation and abstract – the sea is a concrete object which can be rendered naturalistically, but on the other hand it consist of nothing but waves, weather and light, thus forming an almost abstract space. One can (I think) see how that would appeal to a painter, but it is precisely because of those things that make it fascinating to a painter that describing the ocean is something very hard to do for a writer. O’Brian has been very impressive with this from Master & Commander onwards, but I think in Desolation Island he really outdoes himself – whether he describes a quiet day with a calm ocean or a storm in full blast, his tableaux are not just intense and vivid, but there is a certain transparent luminosity, strata of description stacked upon each other like Turner layers colours. The comparison is probably as trite as it is wrong, but on reading O’Brian’s rendering of the sea I could not but help but be reminded of some of J.M.W. Turner’s paintings, it is the same combination of bold, expressive strokes that yet somehow give the impression of fine, closely observed detail.

Many readers seem to have noticed a certain change in the series starting with this volume – mainly, it is ascribed to O’Brian becoming comfortable with the series format, rather than just a sequence of individual novels who just happen to share the same main characters. While I would not go so far as to say that this is wrong, I think that the shift is happening here is slightly different, and actually away from a serial structure. Patrick O’Brian never seemed much concerned about giving a sense of closure to his Aubrey-Maturin novels; with the exception of HMS Surprise all previous novels just stop at some more or less random point, only for the next installment to take up the thread after several months have passed. None of the earlier novels, however, gets quite as cut off in medias res as Desolation Island – while it’s not quite a cliffhanger, nothing at all appears to get resolved, there are countless threads left hanging, and the novel just… stops. Like we were not at the end of a novel, but rather at the end of a chapter, and I think that is exactly where we are – from Desolation Island onwards, this stops being a simple series and turns into one long novel, a (not counting the unfinished 21st volume) 20-volume spanning roman fleuve (or should that be roman mer?). I might be wrong, and this might only turn out to be something of a story arc inside the larger series, but I’ll find out – in any case, this is my favourite Aubrey-Maturin novel so far, and I’m quite excited to find out where else O’Brian will take his heroes. show less

Desolation Island eventually proves itself a solid fifth instalment in the Aubrey-Maturin series, but it does ask a lot of patience from the reader than, in truth, it deserves. The first half of the book is middling build-up, indulging the weakest aspects of the series: Jane Austen-esque societal trifles and Maturin's vague and unintriguing espionage efforts. All of which, crucially and near-fatally, is on land.

It's when Desolation Island breaks out into its natural environment, the open ocean, that it finally breathes. A hunter-and-prey chase between our protagonists' HMS Leopard and a superior Dutch warship is engaging and ends somewhat shockingly, while the maritime episodes that follow, such as the desperate attempt to save a show more sinking ship, are worthy chasers themselves. I felt like the endearing relationship between Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin wasn't given much opportunity to showcase itself here, and the book's end mid-journey on the titular Desolation Island – just as the yarn was getting interesting – shows the constraints on the book from a storytelling perspective. But there's always enough in an Aubrey-Maturin book to send you windward towards the next in the series. show less

After some time on land, Captain Aubrey finally gets a ship again--an old ship with a terrible reputation, it's true, but at least it's a ship. With him sail his old friend, Dr. Maturin, and a berth full of convicts. But they rapidly run into problems--gaol fever, then a storm that nearly destroys them, and finally being trapped on an island until they can somehow repair their ship.

The scenes relating to the epidemic aboard ship were enthralling, as was fleeing a Dutchman across a storm that created waves a mile high. Less interesting to me was the subplot between Maturin, the captive spy Mrs. Wogan, and her paramour Haropath. There was something distasteful about the way Maturin regarded and manipulated Mrs. Wogan and Haropath, show more particularly in that I felt I was supposed to compare his manipulations to hers and exalt in his triumph. I didn't find him any more moral than Mrs. Wogan (I believe I was supposed to, but I'm never sure about authorial intent) and so the disdainful tone the narrator (Tull) took in regards to Mrs. Wogan really caught in my craw. As much as I hate it when Maturin is hurt, it would do him (and my affection for him) good if he were less beloved by the characters and less successful in every endeavor (except lurve, of course--can't forget that those awful hussies won't have sex with him, which just shows how awful they are, I guess). Everyone else seems to really enjoy this novel, so maybe I was just in a bad mood or something. But truthfully, I disliked Haropath, hated that I was supposed to feel sorry for him, and am very glad to see the back of him, his Nice Guy role, and the way Maturin acted around his captives. show less

Better than The Unknown Shore (the other O'Brian novel that I've read), though both closely follow what I suspect is the author's formula: a chapter or two or preparation, followed by a chapter of sea-going fun, then a bout of scurvy and low spirits that goes on until there's a battle, followed by a shipwreck, the climax, and then the journey back to Britain. This almost perfectly summarizes the plot of both O'Brian novels that I've read.

Desolation Island had a lot more action, bigger battles, and was less interested in the shipwreck portion of the plot than The Unknown Shore. It was better book overall, and I will continue to read O'Brian, but I do hope that he soon breaks away from what is already becoming quite a noticeable formula.