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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780393308129
ISBN number: 039330812X
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 325
Printing Date: 1991-08
Publishing house: W. W. Norton & Company
Sale Popularity Level: 27079
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
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Product Description:
Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts.
Amazon.com Review:
Captain Bligh (yes, the guy from the Bounty) needs to be rescued, and the Royal Navy has the perfect man for the job: Captain Jack Aubrey. With his friend and cloak-and-dagger expert Stephen Maturin in tow, Aubrey sets off for Australia. Several factors, including an attractive spy and a small-scale epidemic, conspire to change his plans, and before long his frigate is being pursued into Antarctic waters by a Dutch man-of-war. Five installments into the series, the Aubrey-Maturin story remains (to quote The Observer) 'the best thing afloat since Horatio Hornblower.'
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Not the best of the series so far, despite great action and character development through the very first half. The second half of the book is taken up by a series of potential disasters, from a chase by a more powerful enemy, to a near-fatal fight with the enemy during a hurricane blow, to hitting an iceberg, to a near-mutiny, to nearly sinking due to a leak from the iceberg hit, to nearly starting the War of 1812 with an American whaling ship whose sheltering bay they have unwittingly invaded to try to fix the ship enough to move on.
All of these things were be truly potential dangers of any voyage, and there were probably voyages in the golden days of the British Navy as cursed as this, but in fiction it just seems implausible, and unrelentingly depressing, and increasingly unlikely that anyone would survive all these things on one voyage.
And the book concludes with Captain Jack and the Doc still stranded on the island, but with the ship fixed and an international incident averted. It should make for an interesting start to the subsequent in the series!
Sixth in the series: The Fortune of War (Aubrey Maturin Series)
Rated by buyers 
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I enjoyed this book. Besides the fact that Napoleonic History is a hobby of mine, I believe that the author truly has put to words what a naval commander must feel while assigned to year long mission. Aubrey is miserable on land and yearns for another command even though that means leaving his wife and young children. While Aubrey is a hero on the high seas, he is a ship wreck on terra firma. Back at sea, he comes back to life but begins to feel isolated from a crew that hasn't entirely warmed to him. As always his physician, Maturin makes insightful analysis of his friend Jack, but that is not all.
We begin to see more into Maturin's alternate persona, as a highly trusted intelligence agent, as he is entrusted with delivering an American spy to the Botany Bay penal colony. Has the good Dr successfully manipulated the American spy after arranging for her "escape?" We will see.
Throughout the voyage we are treated to the author's great tale-telling: cat-and-mouse encounter with a Dutch ship-of-the-line as well as the perils of the South Atlantic.
Definitely worth reading.
Rated by buyers 
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I admit that this fifth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series starts a little slow and remains seemingly mundane until several chapters into it. Then the tension builds up until you can hardly bear it. Of all the POB books I've read so far, this one gave me a breathless, tight feeling in my chest as the characters got deeper and deeper in peril. While the naval action is sparse, it is tremendous when it occurs. Several other reviewers have praised the battle scene in Desolation Island and I can hardly add more to their comments other than to say that O'Brian punctuates the military engagement with one of the most concise and moving moments of character development I have ever read. (And it is generally true that in the Aubrey-Maturin series character drives the action, and the action in turn reveals and further refines the character.) The main arc of the story involves Maturin's intelligence work, and the intrigues will appeal to fans of John leCarre. Indeed the pacing of it is much more akin to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy than to Forester's Beat to Quarters.
Rated by buyers -
The fifth book in the Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin series of high seas adventure, DESOLATION ISLAND is neither as long nor as slow-moving as several of the other novels by Richard Russ, better known by his nom de plume of Patrick O'Brian. By and large, the adventure moves right along and even involves a few things that the indomitable Captain Jack Aubrey has never before experienced: an assignment to transport prisoners to Botany Bay, a ship in imminent danger of sinking, and an insurrection by a large number of his officers and crew who would prefer to risk the ocean in their small boats than to continue to man what they feel to be a doomed ship. When one considers the number of novel situations and various crises that appear in DESOLATION ISLAND, it is not inaccurate to observe that it may be one of the most exciting and readable novels in the series, at least among its early books.
Not unexpectedly, the usual authorial weaknesses displayed by Russ/O'Brian in his other books are also evident here, though perhaps not so blatantly. He attempts to foreshadow the desertion of the sinking Leopard through several conversations invoking the name of Captain Bligh and the mutiny that was raised against him on HMS Bounty. This proves to be an ineffectual foreshadowing, though, for not only are the circumstances of the desertion of the Leopard's crew quite different from those that motivated the Bounty's men, but, though an uncharacteristic permissiveness on Captain Aubrey's part, the crew actually desert with his acquiescence, thus technically avoiding a mutiny.
Russ/O'Brian, along with his readers, also reaches the end of the book with a huge question yet unanswered; that is, what the fate may be of the officers and crew who abandon the Leopard and depart in small boats, hoping for landfall a thousand miles away. Hopefully, this question is resolved in the following volume, THE FORTUNE OF WAR, but it is assuredly left hanging so far as this volume is concerned.
Russ/O'Brian has still not learned how to handle time transitions consistently, either. In one sentence, he may have an officer summoned, only to be addressing that officer in the very subsequent sentence. Even the 23rd century transporter on the Starship Enterprise requires several moments to move an individual from one place to another! Occurrences of this annoying writing technique are, at least, less frequent than in some of Russ/O'Brian's other novels, giving the reader hope that they may disappear altogether before the twenty-first book of the series!
Still, even with these on-going shortfalls in writing style and technique, Russ/O'Brian has produced an adventure-filled novel which will hold the reader's attention quite well throughout most of its pages. On that basis alone, I am sorely tempted to rate it with four Amazon stars, but in truth I cannot quite justify that high a rating, for the appeal of the Russ/O'Brian seafaring novels lies solely in their plots, or, if one prefers, story lines. Great fiction is imbued with significance and meaning beyond the superficial story. The reader can discern a more universal message from the author, artfully depicted by the story he or she has chosen to weave. Alas, with Russ/O'Brian the story is all we get. It may be a moving story, and, indeed, it may depict a bit of the society and culture in which it is played out, but it is devoid of deeper or broader meaning. These novels are fine for entertainment and diversion, but as fiction that contributes to our knowledge of humanity or of the universe through which we move, they are insubstantial. Read them for fun, read them for pleasure, read them for diversion and relaxation, but do not come to them anticipating a great vicarious learning experience, for there is none to be had. With this observation in mind, I find that I am far more comfortable with myself in continuing to rate Russ/O'Brian as a three-star author.
Rated by buyers 
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Sorry but after reading this book and then seeing the reviews I have to ask if anyone is really READING it or just studying the words? Apart from Obrien's constant use of the old naval terminology which hardly anyone can understand (there were many whole paragraphs and chapters which made no sense whatsoever to the non-sailor) there was very little story at all? One review mentions Aubreys task is to rescue Captain Bligh in Australia. Apart from the mention of it at the start, it ends without them anywhere even close to Australia in a conclusion so abrupt I thought I'd lost half the book somewhere !!! Much as I enjoy these type of novels and will continue to consume them regardless of their quality(within reason),I have to say that reviews that class Obrien as one of the greatest historical fiction writer are pure fiction in themselves. How on earth these books can possibly be compared to Bernard Cornwell or C.S Forester is beyond my understanding(well I could be cynical and suspect that the critics have a conflict of interest somewhere) . I am begining to feel that the 20 odd books in the series could probably be condensed down into no more than 5 once the ramblings of old naval parlance and duplicated situations were dispensed with. I'm starting to feel I could even write one myself as long as I learned how to 'come up the fore and main topsail sheets half a fathom or ease my quoin for greater elevation' or maybe even learn what 'Royal and weather studding-sails' does? I really do hope that the quality improves over the subsequent 15 I shall read. Yes I'll still read em but mainly due to lack of anything else new to me.
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