Book Log #52: Treason’s Harbour, by Patrick O’Brian

[annathepiper]

Some may say that listening to an audio book doesn’t count as reading it–that you lose something in the process of imagining the action for yourself, and that there’s an extra layer of interpretation between you and the author’s words because someone else is reading them to you.

Me, I don’t quibble about this much. As far as I’m concerned, a decent narrator can do a great deal to make a story come alive, and Patrick Tull did do a very fine job narrating the version of Treason’s Harbour I listened to. I did have to do various mental doubletakes at his portrayals of various character accents, since I have Aubrey and Maturin thoroughly imprinted into my brain as Mr. Crowe and Mr. Bettany from the movie–but aside from that, Mr. Tull did do very well distinguishing character accents from his own voice. And in general he seemed a fine narrator for the overall flavor of an Aubrey-Maturin adventure, very British, very proper, and sounding in character for the time frame in which the books are set.

As for the story itself, now we’re talking. This has been my favorite of the last few of the Aubrey-Maturins I’ve read, in no small part because of the delightful intrigue plot involving Stephen having to help Mrs. Laura Fielding, who’s been forced by the French to try to spy on their behalf because they’ve imprisoned her husband. There are quite a few hijinx involving Aubrey being mistaken for her lover while she is in fact trying to seduce Stephen, and Aubrey himself mistakenly believing that Stephen is in fact having an affair with her–all of which provides quite a bit of lovely character interaction between our two principles.

Played off against this is Stephen’s actual intrigue going on with Mrs. Fielding, as he enlists Mrs. Fielding’s willing help to turn the French’s efforts against them. Meanwhile, Jack has intrigue of his own as he’s ordered to go on an urgent mission into the Red Sea, which gives the reader a fine opportunity to see an older, more seasoned Jack desperately trying to turn his fortunes around by pulling off another spectacular success… and what happens when things don’t go quite so well as that.

Overall this was highly enjoyable, as the Aubrey-Maturins generally are for me, and I’m ready to take on The Far Side of the World! Four stars.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Comments

[jedishampoo.livejournal.com]

Oh, Aubrey-Maturin books... sigh (of love). Most of those books all mesh together for me into one big story, so I can't remember everything separately. I do remember loving how Stephen can be the ladies man by being his weird self. (Jack, of course, had women jumping all over him, and rightly so.)

So the audio books are good? Do they capture the dreamy beauty of the language? I love love O'Brien's language and writing style so very much. When I first started the first book I was wondering how the man could use so many semi-colons and colons and write sentences that went on for paragraphs, but after a few chapters I was utterly in love with his style.

I also remember that Far Side of the World is completely different from the movie, but a great book in that completely different way!

(The movie is so very wonderful; I even (blasphemy, I know) think it was better than Return of the King, as a movie-- though of course PJ was getting the Oscar for the trilogy that year so Peter Weir and Russell Crowe and co. just chose an unfortunate year to be completely excellent. I heard that they're considering making another movie.)

Ack! Blather. Sorry-- I'm a fanatic, can ya tell? :)

[annathepiper]

Well, I've only listened to the one audiobook so far, and that was because sksouth loaned it to me as something to amuse myself with during my recovery from my recent surgeries. But I only just now got around to listening to it because I didn't want to skip ahead of the other Aubrey-Maturins I hadn't read yet, and I'm trying to read them in order. :)

There are apparently at least two different audio releases, if my poking around on Goodreads and iTunes is any sign. I've seen references to two different narrators doing versions of the books. The one I listened to is one of the older ones narrated by Patrick Tull, and yeah, he did a decent enough job.

I am indeed aware of the rumblings of a new movie and will be ABSOLUTELY OVER THE MOON if they do another one. <3 I love, love, love the movie. It's because of that movie that I started reading the books to begin with, and then I promptly fell in love with them on their own merits.

And yeah, I know the actual book The Far Side of the World is significantly different, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. (In fact, I've been amusing myself in recent A-M books looking for the little bits they swiped for the movie. I giggled all fangirlishly when I found the bit involving "the lesser of two weevils" in an earlier book. ;) )