Last night I finished reading “The Hundred Days”, the 19th novel in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin series. If you haven’t come across these books, they are naval history novels set in the late 18th/early 19th (you may have seen the film “Master and Commander” which is based on one of the books – I have it on DVD but have never managed to find time to watch it). Jack Aubrey is a sea captain who leads various voyages of derring-do, always accompanied by Stephen Maturin, naval surgeon, naturalist and intelligence expert. The novels slowly weave stories of long voyages, bloody battles at sea, political intrigue etc. They are slow reads – it takes weeks to move around at sea and the books depend greatly on O’Brian’s attention to detail and the subtle interplay between his main characters. Anyway, in “The Hundred Days”, Aubrey and Maturin disrupt Napolean’s attempts to mobilise mercenary troups in the Mediterranean and prevent a large amount of gold from reaching its intended recipients (Napolean’s allies). Rather shockingly, and completely out of the blue, towards the end of the book a character who has been at Aubrey’s side throughout the series is blasted by a cannon-ball. Returning the book back to its place on the shelf I was dismayed to find that there is now just one more left for me to read in the series before I have to bid farewell to Aubrey and Maturin altogether.
Tim O'Hare 