Master and Commander

In science fiction circles, there's often a debate about “hard” vs “soft” sci-fi, and which makes for better literature. Proponents of hard sci-fi argue that it's essential to get the scientific details of a story right, and that things which violate known rules about physics (time travel, faster-than-light spaceships, etc) should be avoided. Fans of softer stuff, on the other hand, argue that the story is what's important, and that scientific accuracy is important only to the degree that it advances or helps the plot of the story.

Master and Commander is kind of like the hard sci-fi version of a sailing novel set during the Napoleonic wars. It seems very historically and navally accurate, and from reading the author's forward it's obvious that achieving that accuracy was of great importance to him. It's almost too accurate, though - as someone without a background in sailing, it took me a good chunk of the novel to understand was was going on, when the relationship between Aubrey and Maturin was what I really cared about, rather than the technical stuff.

I can see what people like in this, it just isn't for me.

I'm not sure whether to rate this 4 starts or 5 stars. On the one hand, the world-building is amazing and actually feels like the book was written in the 19th Century. On the other hand, the book assumes a virtually expert-level knowledge of 19th Century sailing terminology. How you get on with the book will largely depend on how willing you are to set aside the dictionary and just go with the flow.

In any event, the book is very well written and is genuinely thrilling at times (in fact, one of the battles manages to be thrilling even though witnessed from a distance). I'm very much looking forward to the next in the series...

These are great books. However, O'Brian is famous for his use very arcane language(party because he is one of the last writers to have gone to sea as a boy in the early part of 20th century). If your unfamiliar with sailing nautical terms you should pick up the lexicon for the series called “A Sea of Words”.