基本信息出版社：W. W. Norton & Company
页码：319 页
出版日期：1992年08月
ISBN：039330907X
条形码：9780393309072
装帧：平装
正文语种：英语
丛书名：Aubrey/Maturin Series
外文书名：十三鸣礼炮

内容简介 在线阅读本书

Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, return to set sail for the South China Sea on a diplomatic mission intended to prevent links between Bonaparte and the Malay Princes.
作者简介 Patrick O'Brian, one of our greatest contemporary novelists, is the author of the acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin tales and the biographer of Joseph Banks and Picasso. His first novel, Testimonies, and his Collected Short Stories were recently republished by HarperCollins. In 1995, he was the first recipient of the Heywood Hill Prize for a lifetime's contribution to literature. In the same year he was awarded the CBE. In 1997 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by Trinity College, Dublin. He died in January 2000 at the age of 85. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
编辑推荐 Amazon.com Review
Will Napoleon Bonaparte form an alliance with the Malay princes of the South China Sea? Not if Jack Aubrey can help it. Conveying a diplomatic mission to the Sultan's court, Aubrey and company must also contend with orangutans, typhoons, and a squadron of wily French envoys.

From Publishers Weekly
The 18th in O'Brian's Jack Aubrey series will please current fans and likely make new ones. Newly rich Aubrey ( The Letter of Marque ), again a Royal Navy captain and even a "rotten-borough" M.P., is given command of the frigate Diane with orders to bring king's envoy Fox to conclude a treaty with the sultan of Borneo before Napoleon does. Aboard is Jack's friend Dr. Maturin, English secret agent and avid naturalist. After a placid trip (via Antarctica) and some stormy local politics (involving two English traitors and the sultan's catamite) the treaty is made. Fox's growing arrogance breeds ill will and when homeward-bound Diane hits a reef Jack gladly sends the envoy ahead in a cutter. O'Brian's style has been compared with Jane Austen's: even the dinners (in country house, London, ship's mess, sultan's palace, Buddhist monastery) are distinguished wittily. Perhaps the most charming segment is Maturin's idyllic stay in a remote valley, where he blissfully encounters and studies a variety of tame exotic beasts.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal
O'Brian, author of biographies, novels, and various tales, has again produced a work of sea fiction with Jack Aubrey and his close friend and physician Stephen Maturin as main characters ( The Letter of Marque, LJ 8/90). Set in the waters around the Dutch East Indies during the Napoleonic War, this adventure combines diplomacy, early 19th-century science, and life aboard His Majesty's Frigate Diane as Aubrey attempts to thwart French designs in these waters. This is sea fiction with excellent technical detail for readers with a sophisticated vocabulary. Recommended for public libraries.
- Harold N. Boyer, Marple P.L., Broomall, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews
Norton's admirable attempt to achieve for O'Brian in this country at least some semblance of the success he has enjoyed in England continues apace with the release of this 13th adventure of Captain Jack Aubrey and his crew of British seamen during the Napoleonic Wars, in conjunction with trade paperback reprintings of two earlier books in the series (H.M.S. Surprise, The Mauritius Command). At this stage in his career, Aubrey commands the Surprise, a private man-of-war licensed to do battle with enemy warships on behalf of the Crown. He remains a man whose great capabilities and raw energy while at sea are often nullified by an inability to cope while on land, and so it is that captain and crew set sail most precipitously for South America after a lengthy stay ashore, at least in part so that Jack will make no social or political errors that might set back his efforts to be restored to the Royal Navy. Aboard as always is Dr. Stephen Maturin-- Aubrey's closest friend, ship's surgeon, and British spy--the character who provides an intellectual counterpoint to Jack's more physical presence. While the Surprise goes on its appointed rounds, however, Aubrey and Maturin undertake another assignment- -delivering a British envoy to the Malaysian Islands to negotiate a treaty there in competition with the French (a mission that, happily, requires that Jack's precious Navy rank be returned him). The story's the thing, of course, but the ultimate appeal of the Aubrey/Maturin adventures lies in O'Brian's delicious old- fashioned prose, the wonderfully complex sentences that capture the feel of the sea and the culture of the great warships, all the while sketching with apparent accuracy and truth the early- 19th-century world. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
In length the [Aubrey-Maturin] series is unique; in quality--and there is not a weak link in the chain--it cannot but be ranked with the best of twentieth century historical novels. -- T. J. Binyon, The Independent