There's an obvious comparison between this series and C. S. Forester's Hornblower series. Both follow the career of a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic wars. Still, they are separate works. For one thing, O'Brian's Jack Aubrey is a very different sort of person from Forester's Horatio Hornblower. Where Hornblower is reserved and intellectual, Aubrey is much more rough around the edges, rambunctious and appreciative of wine and song. I suppose that in some ways Aubrey is the anti-Hornblower. I think I prefer Forester's series, in part because of the characters but also in part because, oddly enough, O'Brian's prose seems more stilted and archaic, despite having been written some thirty-odd years later. Still, I did enjoy this book overall and will be continuing the series, at the very least until I run through the ones I already have.

Started: 2007-07-17 | Finished: 2007-08-18

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