Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Master and Commander (Aubrey / Maturin, Bk 1)

Master and Commander (Aubrey / Maturin, Bk 1)
reviewed on + 25 more book reviews


This, the first in a splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Capt. Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the offers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.

"The best historical novels every written." NY Times.