Aubrey-Maturin Series
A twenty-volume hardcover set of the complete Patrick O'Brian high-seas Aubrey/Maturin adventure classics, including the final book: Blue at the Mizzen. The Great Adventure begins in Master & Commander with the near-disaster of Jack Aubrey's first encounter with Stephen Maturin and the taking of the Cacafuego. Post Captain: Jack and Stephen vie for the affections of Diana Villiers. H.M.S. Surprise: In India, a prodigious blue diamond, a fatal duel, and a dramatic fleet action against the French. The Mauritius Command: An exploration of aberrant psychology and a most memorable storm at sea Desolation Island: The Waakzaamheid chases the Leopard south to the glories of Antarctica. The Fortune of War: Jack encounters the American navy, is taken prisoner, and witnesses the fateful clash of the Shannon and the Chesapeake. The Surgeon's Mate: A shipwreck on the coast of France, and Jack and Stephen are rescued from a French prison thanks to Diana's diamond The Ionian Mission: The Surprise is sent to intervene in the tangled politics of the Balkans.Treason's Harbour: A desert crossing, an unusual single-ship action in shoal waters, and Jack saved from treachery in Malta by Stephen's cunning. The Far Side of the World: Typhoons, castaways, shipwrecks, murder, and criminal insanity in the far reaches of the Pacific The Reverse of the Medal: Jack, lured into a disastrous investment by French agents, is court-martialed and disgraced.
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26recommend
48mentions
36people
2010–2026years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If you've seen the movie master and commander and liked it, or are interested in a long series with 20 well written books, I'd recommend Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. It's book one of the Aubrey–Maturin series. It's historical naval fiction, written in the 1970s so the style is a touch more formal than current books but you can sense the "classiness" of the writing.
- Diff'rent strokes. In the depths of a 1.75-year-long major depressive episode in 2015-2016, one of the VERY few books that completely made me forget my misery while I read it was "The Goldfinch." The others: Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series.
- > Please please suggest me some books where language and style of speaking sentences takes the crown rather than the story being the selling point.
I will give you approximately twenty delightful novels where the prose and the stories are both excellent: Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin series.
I avoided these books for the longest time because I didn't believe I was the kind of person who would read “books about tall ships.” But so many people recommend these particular books because of the masterly writing that I tried the first, Master and Commander. Immediately, I was taken by O’Brian’s writing: vivid, lively, and engaging, while also utterly precise.
Give that first novel a try. It’s not easy, but it is oh so rewarding.
Edited to add some examples from the first novel:
“I have never yet known a man admit that he was either rich or asleep: perhaps the poor man and the wakeful man have some great moral advantage.”
“Where there was no equality there was no companionship: when a man was obliged to say ‘Yes, sir,’ his agreement was of no worth even if it happened to be true.”
“He held up two fingers, in case a landman might not fully comprehend so great a number.”
“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
- Thanks, I'll add it to the list. I know I've read this one, but reading the plot summary on wikipedia, I remember very little of it. The death books are ones I mostly read 20+ years ago when I was a bit too young to grasp more than the basic layers. This thread has got me excited to reread the whole series :)
I recently finished the Aubrey-Maturin series after 13 months of through-reading thanks to a different HN thread. Quite a different series but certainly worth a read as well, especially books 3-10 or so.
- I couldn't recommend Patrick O'Brian more, I binged the entire Aubrey-Maturin series during lockdown and was genuinely sad for a week when I reached the end of it.
- I'm pretty happy to say I've read somewhere between 20-30 books this year*. Right now making my way through The Silmarillion finally. I also read the entire Aubrey-Maturin series, which was incredible, even if they were probably the hardest books I've ever read.
(* Less happy to say it's mostly because I've been cripplingly depressed but hey, reading is reading)
