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

O`brian, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393319792 ISBN 13: 9780393319798

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999

Synopsis

Napoleon, escaped from Elba, pursues his enemies across Europe like a vengeful phoenix. If he can corner the British and Prussians before their Russian and Austrian allies arrive, his genius will lead the French armies to triumph at Waterloo. In the Balkans, preparing a thrust northwards into Central Europe to block the Russians and Austrians, a horde of Muslim mercenaries is gathering. They are inclined toward Napoleon because of his conversion to Islam during the Egyptian campaign, but they will not move without a shipment of gold ingots from Sheik Ibn Hazm which, according to British intelligence, is on its way via camel caravan to the coast of North Africa. It is this gold that Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin must at all costs intercept. The fate of Europe hinges on their desperate mission. "The Hundred Days is certain to delight O'Brian's fans, for whom happiness is an unending stream of Aubrey/Maturin books....[It] is a fine novel that stands proudly on the shelf with the others." Los Angeles Times"

About this title

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

Review:

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

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

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.--E. O. Wilson"

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.--Richard Snow"

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.--Tamar Lewin"

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

[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.--David Mamet"

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

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"

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0393319792
• ISBN 13: 9780393319798
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320