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winterbadger50 Books: Well, I'm behind the curve here. Already done half the year, and I'm not close to 25. Ah, well.
18/50 and 19/50: The Ionian Mission and Treason's Harbour by Patrick O'Brian. Two more of POB's excellent naval novels. POB branches out from the standard fare of Royal Navy/age of sail novelists (the blockade of Napoleonic France and inevitably successful cutting-out expeditions) to expand the diplomatic and intelligence reach of his series. The first novel deals with blockade, yes, but highlights some fo the problems faced by the Royal Navy that are underplayed by other authors; and after a rousing but inconclusive chase, the second half of the novel deals with the tricky details of negotiating joint multinational operations with the fractious subjects o0f the Sublime Porte. The second book follows almost immediately after the first and tells of an expedition to another part of the Turkish Empire, this time the Red Sea in another difficult multinational amphibious operation to dish the French out of another of their possessions. All does not go as well, and in part this comes because of the very treasonous goings-on in Malta, temporarily the home base of the British Navy in the Med. Too many British intelligence operatives, it becomes clear, are working in the same space without coordinating. And not all of them are only workign for Britain...
I have yet to find any of POB's books anything but riveting. I continue to do my best not to read them all at breakneck speed right through; I think that I still have at least half the series to go, and the idea of it fills me with delight. The characters are so well drawn, the subtlety of so many of the plot points, be they large or small, is so fine, that I savour every page of his writing in a way that I do few other authors outside of Dorothy Dunnett.
Books in Progress:
Red Branch by Morgan Llewellyn
Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid
The Sultan's Seal by Jenny White
The Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1688-1691 by John Childs
Dropped some of the others because I am not actively reading them at the moment. But I will go back. Soon. Really.
18/50 and 19/50: The Ionian Mission and Treason's Harbour by Patrick O'Brian. Two more of POB's excellent naval novels. POB branches out from the standard fare of Royal Navy/age of sail novelists (the blockade of Napoleonic France and inevitably successful cutting-out expeditions) to expand the diplomatic and intelligence reach of his series. The first novel deals with blockade, yes, but highlights some fo the problems faced by the Royal Navy that are underplayed by other authors; and after a rousing but inconclusive chase, the second half of the novel deals with the tricky details of negotiating joint multinational operations with the fractious subjects o0f the Sublime Porte. The second book follows almost immediately after the first and tells of an expedition to another part of the Turkish Empire, this time the Red Sea in another difficult multinational amphibious operation to dish the French out of another of their possessions. All does not go as well, and in part this comes because of the very treasonous goings-on in Malta, temporarily the home base of the British Navy in the Med. Too many British intelligence operatives, it becomes clear, are working in the same space without coordinating. And not all of them are only workign for Britain...
I have yet to find any of POB's books anything but riveting. I continue to do my best not to read them all at breakneck speed right through; I think that I still have at least half the series to go, and the idea of it fills me with delight. The characters are so well drawn, the subtlety of so many of the plot points, be they large or small, is so fine, that I savour every page of his writing in a way that I do few other authors outside of Dorothy Dunnett.
Books in Progress:
Red Branch by Morgan Llewellyn
Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid
The Sultan's Seal by Jenny White
The Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1688-1691 by John Childs
Dropped some of the others because I am not actively reading them at the moment. But I will go back. Soon. Really.
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Date: 2011-06-30 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-30 02:35 pm (UTC)