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Title: Desolation Island

Subtitle: Aubrey-Maturin Series, Book 5

Author: Patrick O'Brian

Narrator: Ric Jerrom

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-01-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 43 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend and surgeon Stephen Maturin sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts. Among them is a beautiful and dangerous spy - and a dangerous disease which decimates the crew.

Members Reviews:

excellent series

Again I love the Albury Machurin series of books, reside permanently on my phone and listened to several times a year.

Psychological Age of Sail Adventure

Desolation Island (1978), the fifth novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, begins like the fourth one, depicting the home life of Captain Jack Aubrey, but now his situation appears to be improved, due to his successful completion of the Mauritius mission (complete with juicy prize ships) in the fifth novel, so that he's paid off the debts of his mother-in-law-from-hell and has enough money to add extensions to his house and even to lend 780 pounds to his bosom buddy Stephen Maturin. Jack's twin daughters are looking like little girls instead of like wizened aliens, and his infant son is healthy. Wife Sophie is worried, however, because Jack ashore tends to be too trusting, with the result that he's being cheated out of money by card sharps and a dubious silver refining venture. As a sailor aptly puts it later in the novel, "When we're ashore, sometimes we're a little at sea." Luckily for Jack, he's got a new commission: he's to captain the Leopard, a renovated fourth class war ship, some 15,000 miles to Botany Bay, Australia, there to deal with a delicate situation involving Captain Bligh, who has suffered from a second mutiny after the famous Bounty incident.

Stephen is in bad condition because Diana Villiers has yet again jilted him by going to America with another man and because his laudanum regimen has begun to debilitate him, but Jack's mission might get him out of his funk. Because an American friend of Diana's, Mrs. Louisa Wogan, has just been arrested for spying on England and will be transported to Botany Bay aboard the Leopard, Stephen will join the voyage in both his official role as ship's surgeon and his covert role as intelligence agent, and the prospect of encountering interesting flora and fauna in the southern hemisphere appeals to him. And of course Jack and Stephen enjoy each other's company aboard ship, whether making good music with their violin and cello or good conversation when duty permits.

Over their voyage of thousands of miles, Jack and Stephen have to deal with challenging matters relating to their respective duties, Jack captaining a ship full of 340 men, a score of transportation prisoners (including, much to Jack's discomfort, a few women), and an untrustworthy officer, all the while being on the look out for enemy ships (England still being at war with Bonaparte's France and the Dutch) and, after a certain point, "ice islands," while Stephen has to keep the people on the ship in good health while withdrawing from laudanum and plumbing Mrs. Wogan and befriending her lover to see how deep her espionage runs.