Preparing for the Aubrey/Maturin Chapter-a-Week Read-along: Book 3 – H.M.S. Surprise
If you’re participating in the Aubrey-Maturin Chapter-a-Week 4 Year Read-along Schedule, then you have just reached the end of Post Captain by reading a chapter a week for the last fourteen weeks. Combined with our twelve-week reading of Master and Commander, we are exactly half way through the first year of our four year odyssey through the Aubrey-Maturin books. Congratulations!
As much as I enjoy Master and Commander, I feel like Post Captain is the real beginning to the series. Because Master and Commander is mostly a naval adventure story (albeit a great one) it feels more like a prologue than like the actual first book in the series. In Post Captain we meet the key women in the story, we find out about Maturin’s career in intelligence, and many of ongoing conflicts are introduced.
This post is for you to post your feedback about the book and the series. What did you think of Post Captain? Feel free to leave your thoughts, reactions, and questions about Post Captain in the comments section below.
Next up is another one of my favorites, H.M.S. Surprise, in which we are introduced to a vessel every bit as important and beloved as the main characters. We will spend all summer getting to know H.M.S. Surprise and her crew, from June 28 to September 12.
Happy reading, shipmates!
Hoping to catch up here as well…..!
I love this book so much – O’Brian’s homage to Jane Austen 🙂
Now I just have to find time to finish my review….!
PC is indeed critical for establishing major female characters. I think particularly of Diana, because her complicated and disturbing upbringing so affects her adult behaviour She deserves more sympathy rather than the harsh condemnation I’ve seen expressed by some readers. I think it’s too easy (dare I say lazy) to gloss over her early history and thereby fail to see her worldview. Anyway, I do so enjoy POB’s fully-fleshed out, interesting female characters, rather than pit or pedestal stereotypes. Refreshing. So enjoying this slow read.