The Hundred Days: 19 (Aubrey/Maturin Novels) - Hardcover

O`brian, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393046745 ISBN 13: 9780393046748

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999

Synopsis

Hardcover. Pub date: 1999 08 Pages: 288 Publisher: WW Norton & Co. Nineteenth novel in the Auey-Maturin series: A classic naval adventure crammed with incident. Superbly plotted and Utterly gripping You are in for the treat of your lives. Thank God for Patrick O'ian Irish TimesWith the Napoleonic wars looking all but over. Jack Auey was already on his way across the Atlantic to try his fortunes under the flag of the young Chilean republic when Napoleon escaped from Elba. Hurriedly appointed to command a squadron flying the oad pennant of a Commodore. Jack was made flag officer in all but name. to operate within and without the Mediterranean on a number of difficult and dangerous missions in an atmosphere of confused political allegiances and with whatever ships could be scraped together at a moment's notice.Conspiracy in the Adriatic. in the Berber and Arab lands of the sout...

About this title

Product Description:

Napoleon escapes from Elba, and the fate of Europe hinges on a desperate mission: Stephen Maturin must ferret out the French dictator's secret link to the powers of Islam, and Jack Aubrey must destroy it. Boldly conceived and brilliantly executed, "The Hundred Days" is Patrick O'Brian's most ambitious novel yet, and surely one of his most rewarding. In this climactic -- but not final! -- adventure in the celebrated Aubrey/Maturin series, O'Brian succeeds in grafting his familiar, ever compelling principal characters to an historical event of tumultuous significance: the final defeat of Napoleon. The result is entertainment, excitement, and an intriguing exercise in what if . . . history, all encompassed in a magnificently rounded and complex work of fiction.

Review:

The year is 1815, and Europe's most unpopular (not to mention tiniest) empire-builder has escaped from Elba. In The Hundred Days, it's up to Jack Aubrey--and surgeon-cum-spymaster Stephen Maturin--to stop Napoleon in his tracks. How? For starters, Aubrey and his squadron have been dispatched to the Adriatic coast, to keep Bonapartist shipbuilders from beefing up the French navy. Meanwhile, one Sheik Ibn Hazm is fomenting an Islamic uprising against the Allies. The only way to halt this manoeuvre is to intercept the sheikh's shipment of gold--because in the Napoleonic era, as in our own, even the most ardent of mercenaries requires a salary.

The Hundred Days is the 19th (and, we are told, the penultimate) instalment of O'Brian's epic. Like many of its predecessors, it features a swashbuckling plot, complete with cannon fire, exotic disguises and Aubrey's suspenseful, slow-motion pursuit of an Algerian xebek. Yet it never turns into a mere exercise in Hornblowerism. In part, this is due to O'Brian's delicate touch with character--the relationship between extroverted Aubrey and introverted Maturin has deepened with each book, and even Aubrey's reunion with his childhood companion Queenie Keith is full of novelistic nuance: "They sat smiling at one another. An odd pair: handsome creatures both, but they might have been of the same sex or neither." Nor does the author focus too exclusively on his dynamic duo. Indeed, The Hundred Days is very much a chronicle of a floating community, which Maturin describes as "his own village, his own ship's company, that complex entity so much more easily sensed than described: part of his natural habitat."

Finally, O'Brian shows his usual expertise in balancing the great events with the most minuscule ones. Other authors have written about battles at sea, and still others have recorded the rapid rise and fall of Napoleon's fortunes after his escape from confinement. But who else would give equal time--and an equal charge of delight--to Maturin's discovery of an anomalous nuthatch? --James Marcus

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0393046745
• ISBN 13: 9780393046748
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288