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The Greatest Multi-Volume Book Series: Aubrey and Maturin
It’s been over a year since I posted (for all the usual reasons: work, family, political fatigue). Lately, however, I’ve been doing some re-reading of some of my favorite book series, and I’ve found it to be energizing and fulfilling. I love to read novels that collectively comprise a “series.” In the detective genre, the Adam Dalgleish novels of P. D. James and the the Lew Archer novels of Ross MacDonald. In fantasy, there’s nothing better than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Even if the plots bear little relationship to each other, the fleshing out of the key characters is, to me, highly satisfying. It’s almost like they become old friends.
So here is the series that I’ve re-read listened to again, and, should I live so long, I’ll return to over and over for the rest of my life: The Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brian. Set in the Napoleonic Wars on board various English warships, this 20-novel series is my all-time favorite series. While they are war novels, the great theme is the exploration of the friendship between the bluff, hearty, Anglican Jack Aubrey, a professional navy officer, and the dark, introspective and very-Catholic physician Stephen Maturin. I love them both, and they love each other in a wonderful fraternal manner.
From scene to scene, you travel from a sea battle, with two ships sending broadsides into the other, to Maturin rapturously reflecting on the birds of the world, to Jack, the wisest of seamen, making rookie financial mistakes on land, to Maturin operating in the dangerous, duplicitous world of wartime espionage. And, best of all, there’s not a bad sentence or piece of dialogue in any of the books–O’Brian is as good a writer as you’re like to get.
The themes are important and the detail is telling.
The secondary characters are amazing: Tom Pullings, Preserved Killick, Barret Bonden, Diana Villiers, Mowatt, Sir Joseph Blaine, Padeen, and on and on.
And perhaps best of all, you can listen to all of them narrated by the late, great Patrick Tull. I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and the combination of O’Brian, Tull, and Aubrey and Maturin is the most felicitous in recording history.
Three honorable mentions: The George Smiley novels of John Le Carre, the Lymond Chronicles of Dorothy Dunnett, and the Bernard Sampson novels of Len Deighton.
Two questions: Are there other Aubrey-Maturin fans out there? What is your favorite series of novels? Why?
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I like all the books, and I would be hard pressed to have a favorite book. My Favorite character is Lucky Jack.
Also, I find the doctor a bit too modern, but that does allow us modern readers to be along for the ride.
Welcome back, TR! Thoroughly delight in Aubrey-Maturin, et al. “Jane Austen afloat” seems an apt description, shared by a friend. Anne Perry’s police procedurals in Victorian London, featuring William Monk, are favorites.
The Richard Bolitho series is another multi-volume contender in that genre.
I stopped counting after I’d read all twenty the sixth time. My favorite is still the first. My wife bought me a tea cozy for Christmas one year. And I’m still looking for a Breguet repeater like Maturin’s. (I already have the sweet oil.)
Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe series is as good.
Welcome back Tab! Aubrey-Maturin is still my favorite though your post reminds me I’ve been planning to read them for a second time – need to get on it! One of the things I like best about O’Brian is he managed to write the books as though he’d done it in 1810 and they’d only been rediscovered in the late 20th century. They don’t give an inch to modernity.
“Always choose the lesser of two weevils.”
Welcome back! On the strength of this post, I’m going to give the books another go (Dad enjoyed them, and tried to get me interested when I was staying with him in 2007. He was very ill at the time, and I probably didn’t give them a fair shake).
When I was in high school, I loved Horatio Hornblower, and read all those books several times. I honestly can’t remember how good they were, really, but as a teenager, I thought they were great!
And I second the Richard Sharpe recommendation. Cornwell is a very different writer from O’Brien, I think, but very good. (I should say that I don’t enjoy Cornwell’s other series half as well as the Sharpe books.)
I’ve listened to the Hornblowers a couple of times. I liked O’Brian better, but the Hornblowers were good.
I liked and purchased all of the Aubrey-Maturin books. I really liked the first half; the latter books got a bit repetitive with the earlier ones, down to re-telling the same jokes and stories between characters.
At the recommendation of a fellow Ricochet member, I started the Royal Cinnabar Navy series with Daniel Leary and Adel Mundy. They are great.
Richard Finlay:
I certainly agree that the first 10 are better than the second 10.
By about book 12, O’Brian had hemmed himself in because he was near the end of the war. He readily admitted that at that point he had to create world for Aubrey and Maturin in which time was no longer connected to the war. Bernard Cornwell (the Richard Sharpe novels) solved this by going back in time and then sandwiching a few of the Sharpe books into his time-line.
Seems like this is the peril of being too successful. I’m pretty sure O’Brian had no clue when he began Master and Commander that Aubrey and Maturin would still be kicking into a 20th installment.
That said, some of the last ten are magnificent. I love The Thirteen Gun Salute, in which the final confrontation between Maturin and the traitors Wray and Ledward is finally reached.
I believe this is my fourth time through. If you wait about 4-5 years pass between reading you, if you’re like me, most of the plot points have receded into the mist and it’s like reading then anew.
Or you can go with the single greatest line in the entire series: “Jack, you have debauched my sloth!”
It’s not salacious as one might think. Which reminds me, there is a lot of wonderful humor in the series.
If the characters age through the books as the series goes on, maybe this is just O’Brien’s version of “unity of time.” The older I get, the more I find myself telling the same jokes and stories to my friends as well . . .
My father read the Hornblower books to us kids. Wonderful.
I plan on filing a post on this, but I have been enjoying the Lee Child Jack Reacher series. While I was in the hospital, I read one book a day. I have only four and a half books left.
Nevil Shute’s novels are time well spent. I’m currently reading Pied Piper.
“On the Beach” was not his best work, his other stories are very well done.
I like the fact that Aubrey got his pennant at the end of the 20th and last novel. The whole series was his life’s driving ambition amidst ups and downs to work his way to Admiral. A perfect way to end a series.
I love the Aubrey-Maturin novels. I’m hard-pressed to choose a favorite, but if I had to pick just one, it would be HMS Surprise.
I bought and read all the Aubrey-Maturin novels and liked them too. O’Brian cut his readers no slack either, on the nautical terms used. I learned a lot about sailing, by osmosis, since he never defined his terms. But I have to say, I prefer the Dunnett series’, and you should start with the “House of Niccolo” series, then go on to Lymond Chronicles. Dunnett deserves much wider exposure-I only found her books by fortunate accident.
Does Robert Jordan get no love?
An English online friend of long standing introduced me to both Dorothy Dunnett and Georgette Heyer several years ago. I’ve been grateful ever since. :-)
I almost forgot, another relatively little known series is the “Camulod Chronicles” by Jack Whyte, the Arthurian legend made delightful. It traces Arthur’s ancestry from his Roman forbears, and makes good history, too. What happens in Britain when the Romans leave is pretty interesting, and Whyte inspires lots of thought. His take on Merlin is pretty clever, too, as is the origin of the sword Excalibur.
Welcome back, TR. I read most of the series in the summer of 2017, after your recommendation. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Love her books!
The Sharpe and Hornblower series are excellent. But I still think that O’Brien tops them in both writing and plot. The BBC series and the movie were what brought me to all three series and enjoyed reading them.
In a totally different venue, I also highly recommend Dorothy Sayers series of Peter Wimsey. Such a romp! I wish she had written more and filled in some gaps.
Margery Allingham’s Campion is delightful. too…
Thanks. Just bought a box set.