As the Royal Navy takes part in the wars against Napoleonic France, young Jack Aubrey receives his first command, the small, old, and slow HMS Sophie. Accompanied by his eccentric new friend, the physician and naturalist Stephen Maturin, Aubrey does battle with the naval hierarchy, with his own tendency to make social blunders, and with the challenges of forging an effective crew — before ultimately taking on enemy ships in a vivid, intricately detailed series of sea battles.

Review:

This is a serious case of not the right reader for the book. The writing is wonderful, and undoubtedly, a ton of research must have gone into it. And if you’re a person who is interested in naval fiction, especially naval fiction of the time, I imagine you will LOVE this book. I am not such a read and as such, I was bored.

The first half of the book is VERY HEAVY in naval/ship/sailing terminology (plus the cant of the time), and I literally read it with a dictionary on hand. This severely compromised my enjoyment of it. And I’ll acknowledge that, as there are 20 books in the series, 200 pages to set up the tone and terminology of the series isn’t unbearable. But as half of a single book, it’s interminable. I likened it to the ~100 pages of whale anatomy in Moby Dick, something you just have to get through to get on with the story.

The second half of the book is far more readable, but it still fell flat for me. I think the problem was that I expected a sprawling sea adventure and instead the story is a series of small everyday adventures of a particular ship and crew. Meaning that there is no single challenge to overcome or adversary to engage or peak in the plot. It’s just one random naval encounter after another. It really wasn’t enough to truly grab me, even if I did like the characters.

I didn’t dislike the book, and I’d probably read another, but it’s one of those books I’m glad to have read but also glad to no longer be reading.