The Hundred Days

John Skow

. . .[T]he series swims . . .on an ocean of wondrous language. . . .If there is a serious flaw, it is that since the novels are mostly about men, they are probably mostly for men. . . . .female characters. . .remain ashore. . .
—Time Magazine

New Yorker

They're funny, they're exciting, they're informative. There are legions of us who gladly ship out time and time again under Captain Aubrey.

Paul Kennedy

. . .[T]hese naval tales are blended into a larger panorama of Georgian society and politics, science, medicine [and] botany. . . .Is this, then, the end of the line for the O'Brian series?. . . .it seems a fair guess that our famous duo will shortly appear in [the Southern] hemisphere for further adventures.
—New York Times

Publishers Weekly

The Aubrey-Maturin series (The Commodore, etc.) nears the two dozen mark the way it began, with colorful historical background, smooth plotting, marvelous characters and great style. The title refers to Napoleon's escape from Elba and brief return to power. Capt. Jack Aubrey must stop a Moorish galley, loaded with gold for Napoleon's mercenaries, from making its delivery. The action takes us into two seas and one ocean and continues nearly nonstop until the climax in the Atlantic. We're quickly reacquainted with the two heroes: handsome sea dog Jack Aubrey, by now a national hero, and Dr. Stephen Maturin, Basque-Irish ship's doctor, naturalist, English spy and hopelessly incompetent seaman. Nothing stays the same, alas: Jack has gained weight almost to obesity, and Stephen is desolated by the death of his dashing, beautiful wife--but they're still the best of friends, each often knowing what the other is thinking. The prose moves between the maritime sublime and the Austenish bon mot ("a man generally disliked is hardly apt to lavish good food and wine on those who despise him, and Ward's dinners were execrable"). There are some favorite old characters, notably Aubrey's steward, Preserved Killick: "ill-faced, ill-tempered, meagre, atrabilious, shrewish" and thoroughly amusing. Chief among entertaining newcomers is Dr. Amos Jacob, a Cainite Jew ("they derive their descent from the Kenites, who themselves have Abel's brother Cain as their common ancestor"), who comes from a family of jewel merchants and has an encyclopedic grasp of Hebrew, Arabic and Turkish languages (and politics). Jacob is as expert as Stephen at spying and even more of a landlubber. O'Brian continues to unroll a splendid Turkish rug of a saga, and if it seems unlikely that the sedentary Stephen would hunt lions in the Atlas mountains (with the Dey of Algiers!), O'Brian brings off even this narrative feat with aplomb. (Oct.)

Library Journal

For the benefit of those who are unacquainted with O'Brian, it was nearly 30 years ago that he began writing his elaborately staged historical seafaring novels about the escapades of Tory naval captain Jack Aubrey and his physician-scientist friend Stephen Maturin. Series fans know how O'Brian takes a few established facts of history and contrapuntally builds an adventure story around them in which Aubrey and Maturin play some indispensable role. On this 19th outing, the dauntless duo performs feats of derring-do to help thwart Napoleon's plans to conquer Europe. The book teems with amusing scenes, vivid dialog, glib phrase-making, and the tall-tale-spinner's gift for never taking the picaresque adventures of his characters seriously. Behind these merits, however, the plot moves with a medieval slowness. The spark of life is missing, and even the most ardent O'Brian idolaters would have to admit that he is beginning to show traces of the assembly line. Not recommended except for those libraries determined to have a complete set of O'Brian's works. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/98.]--A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston

Bernard Cornwell

September 1998

The Hundred Days

On February 26, 1815, the deposed Emperor Napoleon escaped from Elba with a thousand soldiers. A Paris newspaper from the period can tell the rest of the story: "The Tiger has broken out of his den, the ogre has been three days at sea, the wretch has landed at Fréjus, the buzzard has reached Antibes, the invader has reached Grenoble, the General has entered Lyons, Napoleon slept at Fontainebleu, the Emperor will reach Paris today, and His Imperial Majesty will address his loyal subjects tomorrow." It was not quite the rest of the story. On June 18, 1815, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, and less than a month later, he abdicated for the second and last time. The adventure had lasted a little more than a hundred days, but is ever referred to, simply, as the Hundred Days. It was the final, blood-soaked flourish of the Napoleonic Wars, which have provided so many novelists with so many exciting tales.

Patrick O'Brian is far and away the best of the Napoleonic storytellers, and his new book, THE HUNDRED DAYS, is the 19th in a series telling of the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin. It is also one of the best of the series; a classic naval adventure, crammed with incident, superbly plotted and utterly gripping.

The tale is invented. It had to be, for the Hundred Days really belongs to soldiers rather than to sailors. By 1815 Britain's Royal Navy was the world's superpower, unchallengeable by any fleet in any ocean. The fledgling U.S. Navy had tweaked the Royal Navy's pride with its frigate victories in the War of 1812, but when the British fleet appeared, heaping the horizon with sailcloth, even the American frigates fled for harbor. The French Navy had once been a genuine threat, but Nelson had destroyed its morale at Trafalgar, and by 1815, it was a pale shadow of its former greatness. Napoleon, looking to secure his usurped throne, could not expect any help at sea, other than from some privateers who would try to snap up British merchantmen. Not much scope in that background for a naval adventure, but O'Brian has triumphed nevertheless. He devises a plot in which Napoleon's Muslim allies attempt to ship a fortune in gold that will pay for mischief in Europe -- specifically to delay the advance of the Russian and Austrian forces that were marching westward to join their British and Prussian allies in the invasion of France. Jack Aubrey must stop the gold, but first he must find it.

Fans of O'Brian will need no introduction to Jack Aubrey, one of the most attractive heroes of all literature. He is in splendid form in The Hundred Days. "Have you ever noticed," he asks Maturin as they gaze on Cape San Giorgio, "how foreigners can never get English names quite right?" "Poor souls," murmurs Maturin. For many readers Stephen Maturin is the most beguiling of O'Brian's characters (and is widely thought to be a self-portrait of O'Brian himself). He is an Irish intellectual, torn between his patriotism and his detestation of Bonaparte, subtle and merciful, an apparent booby afloat, but as sharp as a scalpel whenever there is political intrigue about. And the good doctor has plenty of intrigue to untangle in this book as he threads the labyrinthine politics of the North African coast.

There is a marvelous evocation of Algiers at the height of its slave-trading days, a lion hunt, and, best of all for me, a wondrously funny subplot about Maturin's supposed Hand of Glory. A Hand of Glory was the murdering hand cut from a hanged man and was supposed to have magical properties, and O'Brian's use of it illustrates his extraordinary knowledge of early-19th-century manners, customs, and technology. At times, in some of the earlier Aubrey-Maturin novels, that encyclopedic background threatened to submerge the characters and plot, but there is no danger of that in The Hundred Days. The detail here is pitched precisely, never deflecting, merely reinforcing verisimilitude (Maturin's operating table is not just covered with sailcloth, but with "number eight sailcloth." That's good.) This is O'Brian at his brilliant, entertaining best, and when he is on this form the rest of us who write of the Napoleonic conflict might as well give up and try another career. Fans of the series will need no encouragement to buy this book, but if you are new to Aubrey and Maturin, then this is as splendid an introduction as you could wish for. I know some people hate reading series out of chronological order, but this book gives away nothing of its predecessors and so can be safely tried. And, once hooked, you will have another 18 novels to read with a promise, thank God, of another to follow.

--Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell was born in London and raised in South Essex. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked for BBC television, mostly as a producer, before taking charge of the current affairs department in Northern Ireland. He is an internationally bestselling author of numerous books, including the Sharpe series, the Starbuck Chronicles, and most recently, the Warlord Chronicles. He lives with his wife on Cape Cod, where he indulges his passion for sailing.

Kirkus Reviews

The 19th volume (The Yellow Admiral) in the most successful modern series of historical fiction indicates no diminishment of power or inventiveness on the part of its author. Loyal fans of the series, which chronicles the martial adventures and complex friendship of Captain Aubrey and the physician/spy Stephen Maturin during the Napoleonic Wars, need to know only that the book is available. Others who have yet to sample the series should know that it stands out because of O'Brian's extraordinary ability to match an uncanny, utterly convincing evocation of early 19th-century Europe with subtle depictions of character, all rendered within the confines of plots featuring considerable adventures.

This time out, the (realistically aging) Aubrey and Maturin are called on to help frustrate Napoleon's last, desperate bid for power. The dictator has escaped from confinement on Elba, has rallied his armies, and is marching on British forces. There's a chance that Muslim mercenaries may cast their lot with Napoleon and tip the balance of power, if French gold reaches them in time. First in North Africa, and then across the Atlantic, the duo pursue the gold. There are clashes on land, some brilliantly rendered action at sea, and while the two eventually triumph, their victory is not without cost. More swift, vivid, engrossing work from the dean of historical novelists.

Boston Globe

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.— E. O. Wilson