{"id":424,"date":"2006-05-28T20:37:01","date_gmt":"2006-05-29T00:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=424"},"modified":"2024-03-24T21:46:33","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T01:46:33","slug":"obrian_golden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2006\/05\/obrian_golden\/","title":{"rendered":"O’Brian, Patrick: Golden Ocean, The<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick O’Brian’s The Golden Ocean<\/cite><\/strong> is an earlier work than his Aubrey-Maturin series, both in terms of when it was written and when it’s set. It tells the tale of Commodore Anson’s circumnavigation of the globe in the 1740s, from the perspective of Peter Palafox, an Irish midshipman on his first sea voyage.<\/p>\n

Of course the inevitable comparison is to the Aubrey-Maturin books—indeed, I doubt this book would have an American publication without them. For reasons of personal taste, I cannot agree with the back cover copy of the library’s trade paperback edition, which asserts The Golden Ocean<\/cite> to be “as captivating” as the later series. I like the Aubrey-Maturin books for their balance of amazing goings-on at sea and character development. The Golden Ocean<\/cite> has plenty of amazing goings-on—so many that it doesn’t have room for the depth of character development. More, the foregrounded character is very young, and while it’s nice to see him grow up, there’s nothing particularly distinguishing about the way he does it.<\/p>\n

In the details of life on board, the humor, and the admirable leadership, this is quite recognizable as a precursor to the Aubrey-Maturin series. It’s also a perfectly enjoyable read in its own right. But it’s Aubrey-Maturin Lite rather than the real thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patrick O’Brian’s The Golden Ocean is an earlier work than his Aubrey-Maturin series, both in terms of when it was written and when it’s set. It tells the tale of Commodore Anson’s circumnavigation of the globe in the 1740s, from the perspective of Peter Palafox, an Irish midshipman on his first sea voyage. Of course … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “O’Brian, Patrick: Golden Ocean, The<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,4],"tags":[336],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-historical","tag-obrian-patrick"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2900,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/2900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}