This is the third book of the Jack Aubrey – Stephen Maturin novel series. If you haven’t read these before, what I would say is that they’re a nice blend of multiple purposes. For one, it’s a ship-going adventures series. It’s also a Napoleonic Wars adventure series. It’s also a Jane Austen-era romance series.
So far the books have been more or less ordered based on a continuous plot from the beginning of the first book to the end of this third book. I don’t know what happens next, but several of the different titles in the series suggest to me a more episodic nature behind the progression. But I will have to see.
In this one we get Jack and Stephen being sent to India as an escort while piloting the frigate, HMS Surprise. There’s some on-land adventures, there’s some spy craft, and there’s Stephen really liking birds, like many of the others.
But the most interesting part is the very opening. At the end of the previous books Post-Captain, we see Jack take over a Spanish ship with a ton of gold in it. This opens with a legal debate about who gets that money. Ordinarily it would be Jack’s to spread around to his ship, but it’s up for debate because of Spain’s debatable political status.
This debate is interesting and like I found in Sharpe’s Eagle and Post-Captain, it’s a remarkable conversation about how corrupt and venal the British army and navy were before the more professionalization of the military.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Surprise-Vol-Aubrey-Maturin-Novels-ebook/dp/B006C3QKQW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550942848&sr=8-1&keywords=hms+surprise)