H.M.S. Surprise, Patrick O'Brian

[rowyn]

I liked H.M.S. Surprise about as well as Master and Commander. I have taken to looking up some of the sea jargon and can now remember the difference between foremast and mizzenmast and what a stay is, and what it means to miss stays (although I don't actually know the mechanics behind the failure.) Overall, still about as ignorant as Dr. Maturin, though. The battles are no longer wholly incomprehensible, but still largely.

For all that, I was glad for the sea-scenes of this book, where Aubrey is comfortable and at home and everything makes sense, in its jargon-laden way.

There are scenes in the story which are amazingly vivid in my mind, like Stephen Maturin being fed by his very young and scolding native guide, who clearly thinks he needs a keeper. She is nine or ten, and she is right: he does. I'm at the stage in the series where I don't want to discuss details much in my review for fear of spoilers. (Spoilers will probably be in the comments, when I talk to alltoseek about the book.) I felt rather sorry for Dr. Maturin in most of this book, while at the same time keenly aware that he had brought the worst of his troubles on himself. I think my stock of pity for him is about exhausted, though. If he's going to insist on making himself miserable, that's his own problem. I'm rating the book overall an 8 of 10.

I think I am going to take a break from the Aubreyad and read something else from my stack o' library books, which has six non-Aubreyad books in it that I really ought to read or return. And while I do want to read more Aubrey/Maturin stories, I've read enough of those two that I will not be annoyed at other books for not being about them.

Comments

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

I feel much the same way you do, honestly. Thing is, it really is hard to get inside her - you do a little in PC, at the beginning, and then after that she just seems to waffle and yank men's strings and generally just try to wrap everybody around her little finger. And part of that is the way her sucky life in her sucky society has warped her - going from the kind of father & husband she had to Mrs Williams, for instance - who could tolerate that?

But fandom mostly despises her. I think you can justify about everything up until she breaks off the engagement to Stephen to go off with this Johnstone fellow. But there I think she was really trying to do Stephen a favour - she doesn't think she'd make him a good wife, so she finds this other way to get along instead of having Stephen bound to her.

But yeah, in general I have a lot of sympathy for Diana, and I like the way she generally tries to manage things herself for herself, instead of relying on men all the time. She has to attach herself to a man to have access to a living, but other than that, she really tries to be free.

is of a real and flawed person that neither Maturin nor Aubrey understand -- that they're both unreliable narrators when it comes to her, so what the reader is seeing is a glimpse of the real character.

THIS! This is spot on perfect. Real and flawed, like Stephen and Jack; and the boys being unreliable narrators - exactly. Jack blames Diana for the whole Canning-Stephen mess, and it's really not her fault at all. Canning brought it on, Stephen set up the environment and followed through, and the society encouraged the whole situation in the first place, by being so sucky. I really didn't like Jack in that moment, being so judgmental, not letting Diana sail home with Stephen :P

[rowyn]

I don't think she ever meant to marry Stephen; I think she didn't want to say no to him then because of his extreme ill health. I noticed she did not say -- to either Jack or Stephen -- "I will marry him", or that they were engaged. I just can't shake the sense that she does, in fact, regard Stephen as her best friend but has no romantic attachment to him. Like maybe she hopes, now and again, that she could fake it for his sake, but she knows there's just no spark.