Reviews
I haven't read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O'Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn't stop., [O'Brian's] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the RoyalNavy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today'sputative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as MarkTwain has outlived Charles Reade, The Commodore is so satisfying...because it is crowded with so many different kinds of pleasures. O'Brian's genius is in his ability to arrange all this material upon the well-constructed frame of an adventure plot....A lyric poet working in the epic form.
