The Surgeon’s Mate

In his seventh outing with his well known characters, naval officer Jack Aubrey and surgeon/spy Dr. Stephen Maturin, Mr. O’Brian gives us one of his most complex and sprawling tales. It almost seems, compared to some of the other books in the series, that three separate plots have been strung together to make this one; nevertheless, it has the makings of a favorite.
The action starts with our heroes entering Halifax Harbour on the frigate HMS Shannon, escorting her capture, USS Chesapeake. While it’s possible to read this book without having seen its predecessor, The Fortune of War, it’s much easier if you’ve read the previous volume recently. Then you’re aware that our heroes have escaped from imprisonment in Boston on Shannon, and also that the doctor had to kill two French agents to do so, as well as having Diana Villiers, the beautiful mistress of an American agent, escape with them. This sets up the pursuit of the ship on which they are passengers that takes them practically all the way across the Atlantic. Discovering that she’s pregnant, Mrs. Villiers accompanies Maturin to Paris where he’s been invited to give a lecture on the biology of extinct birds. The French clearly suspect him but are unable to prove anything, and Diana stays in Paris to have her baby, refusing the Doctor’s proposal — he has been pursuing her unsuccessfully for years. From this bald description you can get some indication how complex the plot really is.

The second “plot” is their adventure in the Baltic where they are assigned to negotiate the surrender of an island fortress.

The third is their passage to Spain, which is interrupted by an encounter with a French 74 and a storm that drives their ship, a corvette, into a dangerous lee shore where she is wrecked. However, the entire crew gets ashore safely and is sent into prison, except our heroes, who are sent straight to Paris and imprisoned, rather comfortably, in the “Temple, where the King was imprisoned.” As they get more and more worried about the Doctor’s cover having been blown in Boston and word of that getting to France, they try to escape, but before they are able to, the doctor is suddenly taken to another location and interrogated. He realizes that Diana has accidentally blown their cover by offering a valuable piece of jewelry for their release, and things look really black for a few pages.

But the book has a delightfully sentimental happy ending that’s about as perfect as it could possibly be. For those who don’t mind complex intrigue, I recommend this as among the best of the O’Brian canon.

Every Patrick O’Brien novel – especially all of the Aubrey Maturin series – should be required reading for anyone who loves a great story with compelling characters, adventure, suspense and just the slightest touch of romance. Add to that that they are steeped in actual history – based on the logbooks of the RN captains who sailed in the era about which he writes – these are history lessons in the most entertaining form imaginable. Highest recommendation i could possibly give.

Seven books into the series, that O’Brian can still suprise me, intrigue me, and keep both character and story fresh astounds and pleases me to the bottom of my feet. This is why O’Brian receives such high praise and accolades, and it is well deserved. _The Surgeon’s Mate_ has Aubrey return home after a long separation, only to find himself in financial and legal trouble ashore – a situation apparently as common to sailors in the early 19th century as it is now. Added to this, Cpt. Aubrey has to contend and deal with the consequences of his dalliance in Nova Scotia. Thankfully, Aubrey and Dr. Maturin are quickly dispatched to the Baltic.

I will forego the details of the mission lest I spoil the plot – suffice it to say the past of Maturin and Aubrey’s service in America catch up with both of them with rather suprising (and delightful) consequences. The title of the book, so often clear to readers as the story unfolds, was here a mystery until literally the final few pages, and was in any case a double-entendre of sorts. That O’Brian, as Aubrey, both enjoy a good play on words, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud as I read the final few pages solving the puzzle. As I’ve said with each previous review on O’Brian’s series, the 5 star reviews of his books are very much deserved. Highly recommended.

THE SURGEON’S MATE, the seventh installment of the Jack Aubrey- Stephen Maturin series about the British naval captain and his surgeon friend at the start of the nineteenth century picks up the story as “Lucky” Jack and the Doctor, along with Diana Villiers (the woman Stephen has long pined for), head back to England after escaping Boston aboard the HMS Shannon and its subsequent defeating of the USS Chesapeake. The story continues with a series of loosely related episodes: Jack’s losing himself in an affair with a woman of questionable character in Halifax, his and Stephen’s mission to win over a Catalan unit from the French at Grimsholm (now in Finland) and capture the fortress there, and the imprisonment of Jack, Stephen, and Stephen’s Swedish assistant Gedymin Jagiello by the French and our heroes’ attempt at escape. Stephen’s secret life as a super spy for the British Crown also becomes threatened.

Throughout the book, the reader might assume the title refers to Jagiello, but it becomes apparent by the end that this is not so. Jagiello, in any case, is an odd character who’s not well fleshed out. He seems to be present mostly for comic relief, and late in the book he also serves as a plot device.

THE SURGEON’S MATE is the least satisfying of the Aubrey-Maturin novels at this point in the series, at least as a stand-alone novel. Although the last fifty pages are exciting, most of the rest of the novel, while still engrossing–Patrick O’Brian’s prose style still pleases–is even more episodic than usual. It reads like a coda to the previous (and superior) book in the series, THE FORTUNE OF WAR (see my review on Amazon.com) than it does a cohesive work of its own merit. Still, to any fan of O’Brian’s novels, this is not an important consideration.

I admit I had a very hard time getting through the beginning of the book. I almost gave up. But, fortunately, the story line picked up. Plus, there were some very long passages that could have been shortened. All in all, though, it was an enjoyable read. Will definitely read more from this series.

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