The Wine-Dark Sea (Aubrey-Maturin Series #16)

by Geoff Hunt (Photographer), Patrick O'Brian

Overview

The sixteenth volume in the Aubrey/Maturin series, and Patrick O'Brian's first bestseller in the United States.

At the outset of this adventure filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin pursue an American privateer through the Great South Sea. The strange color of the ocean reminds Stephen of Homer's famous description, and portends an underwater volcanic eruption that will create a new island overnight and leave an indelible impression on the reader's imagination.

Their ship, the Surprise, is now also a privateer, the better to escape diplomatic complications from Stephen's mission, which is to ignite the revolutionary tinder of South America. Jack will survive a desperate open boat journey and come face to face with his illegitimate black son; Stephen, caught up in the aftermath of his failed coup, will flee for his life into the high, frozen wastes of the Andes; and Patrick O'Brian's brilliantly detailed narrative will reunite them at last in a breathtaking chase through stormy seas and icebergs south of Cape Horn, where the hunters suddenly become the hunted.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393035582
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/17/1993
Series:	Aubrey-Maturin Series , #16
Edition description:	1st American Ed.
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

One of our greatest contemporary novelists, Patrick O’Brian is the author of the twenty volumes of the best-selling Aubrey/Maturin series, as well as many other books, including Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso.

What People are Saying About This

Keith Richards

I fell in love with his writing straightaway, at first with Master and Commander. It wasn’t primarily the Nelson and Napoleonic period, more the human relationships. …And of course having characters isolated in the middle of the goddamn sea gives more scope. …It’s about friendship, camaraderie. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin always remind me a bit of Mick and me.

Editorial Reviews

"lf Jane Austen had written rousing sea yarns, she would have produced something very close to the prose of Patrick O'Brian."

Time

"They're funny, they're exciting, they're informative. . . there are legions of us who gladly ship out time and time again under Captain Aubrey."

The New Yorker

"They're funny, they're exciting, they're informative. . . there are legions of us who gladly ship out time and time again under Captain Aubrey."

The New Yorker

"I haven’t read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O’Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn’t stop."

Boston Globe - Edward O. Wilson

Slicing through the swells of the South Seas, HMS "Surprise" heads for the Peruvian coast on a general-purpose patrol. It's wartime circa 1812, so Captain Aubrey captures en route an American ship and its French master before discharging his main mission: depositing pal and secret agent Dr. Maturin ashore so he can foment revolution against the Spanish. Thickly annealed to this basic action, layer after layer, is talk--stilted talk about swabbing decks; Rousseau; anatomy and medicine; minuets and quartets; the quality of wines--all intended to evoke shipboard life in the days of sail. "Moby Dick" this ain't, but O'Brian's not aiming for the ages: he strikes for readers hungering after nautical minutiae, which he has served up in nearly two dozen tales of sea salts, many starring the Aubrey/Maturin duo. O'Brian appeals to those who buy into his maritime formulas--and the publisher banks on 40,000 doing so this time.

Gilbert Taylor

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin—the amiable, music-loving heroes of O'Brian's wonderful sail-powered series (The Truelove, The Letter of Marque, The Far Side of the World, et al.)—follow orders into the midst of revolutionary South American politics. His Majesty's government has become interested in Peru, where the Spanish vicegerency is tottering and the beastly French seek greater influence. Who better to send to see that, when the old order falls, the new government is Anglophilic than that extremely clever half-Spanish ship's surgeon and spy Stephen Maturin? Maturin, concert-quality cellist, and Captain Jack Aubrey, the best violinist ever to command a man-o'-war, have successfully concluded their business in the South Pacific and are on board Surprise, a privateer. Licensed to steal anything they find in the way of enemy shipping, the duo make it a profitable crossing, taking their biggest haul from the Yankee ship Franklin, which carries, in addition to tons of loot, one Monsieur Dutourd, who says he's just another string-player and utopian disciple of Rousseau but who seems entirely too interested in Peruvian politics. Dutourd presents a problem in that he and Maturin have crossed paths in Paris, and if they land in Lima together, Maturin's identity as a British spy may become known. Along with fretting about Dutourd, Dr. Maturin is concerned about his assistant and fellow naturalist the Rev. Mr. Martin, whose belief that lust in one's heart can result in venereal disease has brought him to death's door. When the sailors at last reach the shores of Peru, Dutourd escapes and Maturin's mission, complicated enough by the various revolutionary factions, becomes a realhair-raiser involving an arduous transit of the Andes, where he is spit on by llamas and sees the great condors. Literate, leisurely, and as charming as the rest of the series. The illustrated guide to sails and masts is worth the price by itself. (First printing of 40,000)

Kirkus Reviews

"Gripping and vivid… a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit."

A. S. Byatt

"It has been something of a shock to find myself—an inveterate reader of girl books—obsessed with Patrick O’Brian’s Napoleonic-era historical novels… What keeps me hooked are the evolving relationships between Jack and Stephen and the women they love."

New York Times - Tamar Lewin

"O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century."

George Will

"Patrick O’Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars."

New Republic - James Hamilton-Paterson

"There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his."

Chicago Sun-Times - Stephen Becker

"The best historical novels ever written… On every page Mr. O’Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don’t, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives."

New York Times Book Review - Richard Snow

"The Aubrey-Maturin series… far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart."

Ken Ringle

"I devoured Patrick O’Brian’s 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog."

Slate - Christopher Hitchens

"I fell in love with his writing straightaway, at first with Master and Commander. It wasn’t primarily the Nelson and Napoleonic period, more the human relationships. …And of course having characters isolated in the middle of the goddamn sea gives more scope. …It’s about friendship, camaraderie. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin always remind me a bit of Mick and me."

Keith Richards

"[O’Brian’s] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today’s putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade."

New York Times - David Mamet

"Addictively readable."

Chicago Tribune

"lf Jane Austen had written rousing sea yarns, she would have produced something very close to the prose of Patrick O'Brian."

Time