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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780393309065
ISBN number: 0393309061
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Quantity: 1
Printing Date: 1993-07
Publishing house: W. W. Norton & Company
Sale Popularity Level: 22007
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
While fashioning a schooner out of the remains of their wrecked ship, Captain Aubrey and his crew suffer an attack by Malay pirates and must rely on the ingenuity of ship's surgeon--and intelligence agent--Stephen Maturin. Reprint.
Amazon.com Review:
Shipwrecked! When Captain Aubrey and his crew go aground on a remote island, they labor to construct a seaworthy schooner from the wreckage (taking breaks, of course, to play cricket.) Their subsequent adventures lead them to the dreaded penal colony at Botany Bay, and then, as always, back to sea.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Not the best in the series. Seems like a placeholder to get to the subsequent story. Not much happens.
Fifteenth in the series: Truelove (O'Brian, Patrick, Aubrey/Maturin Novels, 15.)
Rated by buyers 
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I love this series, I can't stop reading them. Well written, and descriptive, they really take you to a different world.
Rated by buyers -
Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels continue to defy convention. In form and structure, the novels really aren't separate stories, but instead consist of separate episodes within a much larger narrative. While with most series of novels, the author builds each novel as a self-contained narrative, with each story building to its own particular climax. Not so with these novels, which often end on a point of minor transition but hardly the high point of the novel.
"The Nutmeg of Consolation" continues in this line. At the end of the last novel, "The Thirteen Gun Salute," Aubrey, Maturin, and the crew had been stranded on a proverbial desert island, populated only by pigs, ring-tailed monkeys, and birds. "Nutmeg," fittingly enough, opens with a game of cricket as if no time had passed from one novel to the next. The "first act" of "Nutmeg" sees the most action in the novel, as Aubrey's crew comes under attack by a numerically superior force of savages (O'Brian is hardly politically correct), led by a fierce warrior-queen. O'Brian writes thrilling battle scenes, and this is no exception.
Eventually Aubrey and Maturin return to civilization. In dire need of a ship are able to locate the titular Nutmeg of Consolation, a small Dutch ship that in physical appearance would be a mere sloop, but thanks to Aubrey's status as post-captain the Nutmeg qualifies as a frigate. Desperate to halt French progress in the area and eager to prove that the British rule the seas, Aubrey takes the Nutmeg out in pursuit of a much larger French ship. In a chase that spans for hundreds of miles, O'Brian gets plenty of opportunity to capture the daily life aboard ship as only he can.
This episode then gives way - after a joyous reunion with Tom Pullings - to a trip to Australia and Botany Bay. Here Maturin is able to indulge his whims as a naturalist, but not after getting himself and his crew into hot water with the local army forces by thrashing an army man in a duel. Aubrey features less prominently in this portion of the novel, thanks in large part to his taking of a double-dose of physic without Maturin's approval, and ending up much the worse for wear as a result.
"Nutmeg" is a wonderful book because the journeys and adventures develop at a slow pace. O'Brian allows himself the luxury of capturing the various details of 19th-century life in great detail, in all their humour and sadness. A throw-away tale about an encounter with polar bears is one of the most moving passages in all of O'Brian's works, and his description of Maturin's unfortunate encounter with a platypus is a wonder.
All that is to the good, but I must confess that I was a little hungry for more action by the end of the novel. This probably reflects more on me than on the book, but I look forward to return to a little more cannonfire and broadswords in the coming novels. But to be fair, this four-star rating would probably be a five-star if it had been written by somebody other than O'Brian - he has just set his personal bar so high.
Rated by buyers 
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If you are interested in sailing, British naval history, or the high seas... then this is a great historical fiction series. The single movie doesn't really do justice to this excellent series of novels.
Rated by buyers 
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Who is Paulton and why did Maturin want to visit him? Who were the "men and women on the lists?" Who is Padeen and why is Maturin so particularly concerned about him? Is Padeen also known as Coleman? Why would O'Brien give us a hundred pages with nothing more than the sights, sounds, and smells of Botany Bay, unconnected to any story line? What did O'Brien feel he contributed to the story with the addition of the island children to the story? If the essence of the writer's craft is to create and maintain tension, to keep the reader riveted, to entertain, to inform, then even the most avid O'Brien fan must admit that The Nutmeg of Consolation falls short. I will admit that I found some of the Aussie argot amusing, as when we learn that "purple dromedaries" translates as "little, small, bungling pickpockets." But trudging through the final chapters alongside colorless protagonists, I am sure that the reader will be as happy as are the protagonists themselves by the prospect of returning home. This was the subsequent to last book in the Aubrey-Maturin series, and I can't help suspecting that O'Brien's creative light had dimmed.
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