A review by siria
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

5.0

I picked this up without really thinking that it was going to appeal to me—the O'Brian books are marketed very much as Boys' Own Adventures, and I mostly find those kind of books shallow on characterisation and poorly written. Yet this book was such a revelation, and the beginning of a true love for this series: though I struggled with the technical terms at time, the beautifully crafted prose and the carefully delineated characters were more than enough to hook me. It's a little more episodic than the later books, but you can really see how O'Brian is finding his feet in a universe he would inhabit so successfully, so convincingly, for the rest of his life.