H. M. S. Surprise (Vol. Book 3) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)

Amazon.com Review The stakes are high as HMS Surprise opens, and actor Robert Hardy's sterling reading never lets you forget them. Hardy makes Patrick O'Brian's third novel of high-seas adventure--written in 1973 and set mainly in 1805 on the waters surrounding India and the Orient--seem as immediate as an overdrawn checking account. Money plays a big role, and Captain Jack Aubrey stands to make a lot of it. All he has to do is find Napoleon's fleet--and take their gold away from them. (Running time: three hours, two cassettes) --Lou Schuler From Library Journal These two selections represent a series of abridged audiobook versions of O'Brian's works narrated by Robert Hardy, that most blustery and unstudied of British actors. Hardy reads the stories cold, but here it works. He uses his voice to evoke everything from brutality to mannered drawing-room excesses to the physical threat of a storm at sea. The stories are superb depictions of life on a British man-of-war and incorporate O'Brian's exquisitely accurate historical detail (Testimonies, Audio Reviews, LJ 7/96). The friendship of protagonists Capt. Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin plays out against an expanse of ocean, from India to the Atlantic, with a full complement of battles and adventures at sea for devotees of naval fiction. Highly recommended.?Mark Pumphrey, Polk Cty. P.L., Columbus, NC Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. "Few, very few books have made my heart thud with excitement. H.M.S. Surprise managed it."―Helen Lucy Burke, Irish Press Third in the series of Aubrey/Maturin adventures, this book is set among the strange sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, and in the distant waters ploughed by the ships of the East India Company. Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy enjoying overwhelming local superiority. But somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could make him rich beyond his wildest dream: the ships sent by Napoleon to attack the China Fleet... This third segment takes Jack Aubrey to the Indian subcontinent, where both the waters and the terrain are full of unfamiliar dangers. There is, however, a prize in the offing: a flotilla of French ships sent to attack the China Fleet. If Aubrey and Maturin can intercept the French, their fortunes will be made. But can they?

"Few, very few books have made my heart thud with excitement. H.M.S. Surprise managed it."—Helen Lucy Burke, Irish Press

Irish Press

Few, very few, books have made my heart thud with excitement H.M.S Surprise managed it.

After rescuing a friend from French torture chambers, Captain Aubrey attempts to save the British merchant fleet in the Indian Ocean Capt. Aubrey and his friend Maturin sail to the Indian Ocean to save the British merchant fleet from the French 'But I put it to you, my lord, that prize-money is of essential importance to the Navy.