SPOILERS for The Truelove (a.k.a. Clarissa Oakes); here’s the non-spoiler post if you got here by mistake.
The artifice I referred to is Clarissa Oakes herself. I attribute her character to O’Brian wanting to really delve into the ship being torn apart by a woman, but not wanting to be misogynist. Which is admirable, but the aching care to construct Clarissa in a way that removes any reasonable possibility of blame to her . . . it’s so careful that I found it artificial and distracting. I’m not sure whether it’s cause or effect, but I also had a very hard time believing in Clarissa as a character; she felt very piecemeal, not an organic whole as O’Brian’s major secondary characters usually do.
(The speech I thought Tull didn’t do justice to, by the way, was her backstory dump to Maturin on the island. Insufficiently toneless.)
The battle on Moahu felt like an afterthought, a convenient way to get Clarissa off the ship and to get Jack laid. And I can’t think of anything else to say about this.
They don’t go downhill from here, don’t worry, it’s just a weak link.
Jo: thanks, that’s a relief.
I’m interested which books people particularly like and dislike, but I’m going to wait on that discussion until I’m done all of them, just to keep other people’s opinions from affecting my expectations.