Patrick O'Brian - Blue At The Mizzen

Rating: 5/5

Review:
The last of this brilliant series

This is now my third time reading through this brilliant series and I am reminded again how beautifully written and how wonderfully, addictively enjoyable they are.

This is the last book that Patrick O’Brian completed before his death, the twentieth of this great series. It finds Jack and Steven aboard the Surprise during peacetime, again involved in a semi-clandestine mission in Chile to suport independence from Spain. There’s plenty of seaborne action and also both subtle intelligence work and touching personal developments for Steven. The book ends with ne of O’Brian’s genuinely moving moments, done in his characteristic understated way which make them all the more powerful.

Patrick O'Brian is steeped in the period of the early 19th Century and his knowledge of the language, manners, politics, social mores and naval matters of the time is deep and wide. Combined with a magnificent gift for both prose and storytelling, it makes something very special indeed. The books are so perfectly paced, with some calmer, quieter but still engrossing passages and some quite thrilling action sequences. O'Brian's handling of language is masterly, with the dialogue being especially brilliant, but also things like the way his sentences become shorter and more staccato in the action passages, making them heart-poundingly exciting. There are also laugh-out-loud moments and an overall sense of sheer involvement and pleasure in reading.

I cannot recommend these books too highly. They are that rare thing; fine literature which are also books which I can't wait to read more of. Wonderful stuff, and it is a source of genuine sadness to me that they had to come to an end.