I began The Surgeon’s Mate last night.
Not since January had I delved into the world of Aubrey and his close friend Stephen Maturin and I must say I didn’t know I missed them until I read the first line of the book. O’Brian has such a way with words and sentences. Not to mention characters and dialog.
As with most of his books since Post Captain, there is a quick recap of the characters and plot to catch those readers up that hadn’t read about Aubrey and Maturin since the last book was published. The Fortune of War was published in 1979 and The Surgeon’s Mate a year later. So with a year between books (which isn’t a huge time frame compared to other series that have been published, I’m looking at you King) O’Brian takes a small amount of space to reacquaint the reader to his character and what they did in the previous book. His style of the recap isn’t intrusive, however, and blends with the book. Less like a “Previously in the Aubrey/Maturin Series. . . ” and more like “Hey remember this and this because it will be important later on” in between moving the story forward.
It is just good to be back with characters I’m familiar with and a writer that is one of the best in historical fiction.
