The extended sequence of the Aubrey/Maturin novels (twenty works in total) is not merely a notable literary achievement but also a substantial piece of scholarship. It begins with this novel and the chance meeting of our two heroes at a music party in the port of Mahon. Jack Aubrey is a young, heroic naval officer prone to disaster at shore. Stephen Maturin is a land-lubber surgeon, naturalist and spy. They form one of the great literary alliances. Alan Judd has called the sequence 'the greatest extended story since Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time.' Powell, by the way, narrowly misses out on inclusion in the calendar this year on the grounds that I cannot in truth select one novel which stands out sufficiently from the others.
Here is Alan Judd again, catching the strengths of the novels,
They [Aubrey and Maturin] are united by sympathy, respect, acknowledgement of difference, a sense of justice and affection. All this is suggested more in the spaces between words than expressed directly, except when they make music together. In the portrayal of this friendship we learn something of all friendship, just as in the series as a whole we learn of loyalty and betrayal, love and mutability, interest and humour.
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