Book 12 in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, which I've just gotten back to after a bit of a hiatus. I suppose it features Captain Jack Aubrey on a bit of a hiatus of his own, come to think of it: having lost his commission in the Royal Navy thanks to a false accusation, he has turned instead to a stint in command of a privateer-- Oh, excuse me. A letter of marque. Apparently we don't much like the p-word.

I can't say it's a favorite installment of the series. It feels, perhaps, as if having set up a shocking reversal of Jack's fortunes at the end of the previous volume, O'Brian then had to spend the length of this one just writing his way back out of it again, making it feel more like an odd little interlude than anything. And I did have an issue with it that I sometimes have with these books, in that for maybe the first third of it I frequently had no idea what was even going on. Someone would explain a complicated naval situation and end it with the equivalent of "you understand what I'm getting at here, right?" and while the person they were talking to always did, well, your humble land-lubbing reader here, not so much.

Fortunately, though, after a while either I finally got my sea-legs back, so to speak, or O'Brian started putting things more simply for me, and after that I did enjoy it more. Character-wise Jack feels very consistent, although there's nothing that feels like it adds much insight into him: basically he takes the whole matter pretty much exactly as you would expect. But there's some very nice stuff with Stephen towards the end, and one or two of O'Brian's typical moments of delightful humor. So not bad, in the end, but still not exactly a standout. ( )

O'Brian is consistently brilliant. ( )

In Vol.XI of Robert's Adventures in Napoleonic Naval Literature, the protagonist found himself wearied and despondant, wondering whether it was "worth it" to go on.

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http://arbieroo.booklikes.com/post/334864/post

The Letter of Marque, Patrick O’Brian’s twelfth book in his Aubrey-Maturin series, picks up shortly after the events of The Reverse of the Medal, with Captain Jack Aubrey taking the private ship Surprise on cutting-out missions to the Azores, the coast of France, and Sweden all preparatory to a planned mission to South America. The ship, purchased out of the service by Dr. Stephen Maturin, sales as a letter or marque, or privateer, with government papers that Steven arranged in order to protect the ship’s company against impressment. Aubrey has no difficulty in finding able sailors as his reputation for prizes is well-known.

Though Jack starts out rather glum as a result of being stripped of rank following the fallout from the Stock Exchange Fraud, in which Jack was implicated, the novel soon turns a corner as he applies himself to the thing he does best. On the very first trip to the Azores, the Surprise captures a fleet of merchant vessels, one filled with precious quicksilver, thereby earning Jack his crew’s esteem and clearing the debts that had plagued him over the previous few novels. He next sets about capturing the French ship, Diane, along with a few gunships. All of this paves the way for his eventual reinstatement on the Navy List as well as a place in Parliament. Stephen, meanwhile, works to aid Jack behind-the-scenes and seeks the opportunity to reconcile with his wife, Diana Villiers. The motif of a balloon, in vogue since their creation in 1789, occurs throughout as O’Brian uses it to represent Stephen’s fortunes and his mood (pgs. 105, 109, 199). The very real possibility of a gas balloon rising to an altitude at which the aeronaut passed out from lack of air and froze to death while the balloon was carried off fills Stephen’s nightmares, particularly when he learns of his wife’s hopes of making an ascent in her own hydrogen balloon. While O’Brian is willing to put his characters through a great deal of melodrama, he also knows when the reader needs a respite, and this novel returns to the form of his happier tales, with an ending full of the promise of hope.

Like the previous five novels, The Letter of Marque exists outside the normal flow of time – this novel being the sixth of twelve to exist in what O’Brian described as an extended 1812, with these dozen books taking place between the beginning of June 1813 and November 1813. Like his previous novels, O’Brian perfectly recreates the world of the Napoleonic War in 1812, using Aubrey and Stephen’s activities to comment on the rapid changes occurring in this era and the passage of time in the series’ internal chronology. This Folio Society edition reprints the original text with insets containing historical portraits and sketches to illustrate some of the scenes. ( )

Aubrey has been struck off the captains' list in disgrace! Plus he's broke (again). Diana has left Maturin and he is taking way too much opium. Life on land never works out for these two - can they redeem things as privateers? I'm returning to this series after a long absence - it's even better than I remember. ( )