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I think the best compliment I could give the series would be that if I could travel back in time to the early to mid-19th century, I could take one of these novels along and the British people I'd encounter would still really it. The writing just feels so... authentic. None of the characters feel like 20th century people written into the story - they belong to their era. Also, I love how excited Jack gets about all things Maritime in the books. Things like 6 page long letters to his wife, with four of them being detailed things about rigging or ship's trim; the sort of thing that obviously sailors would care about, but no one on land would understand in the slightest.
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Mar 1, 2011 00:41
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Evfedu posted:I had a couple of books to finish before I started this, but finally managed to sit down with it. I'm pretty sure the reader is supposed to be bewildered about all the complexity of the sails and rigging and whatnot. Stephen too knows absolutely nothing about ships, and it becomes a running joke through the series as he misuses nautical terms and fall down hatches / off the side of the ship every book. It's obvious to the reader that Stephen is absolutely brilliant in a lot of ways, but O'Brian knows that his audience, while they may have some ideas about politics or spy stories or nature, (probably) has absolutely no clue about the mechanics or rigging of a three-masted sailing ship. By fully describing it, he: a) teaches us at the same time Stephen is learning about it; b) Enables us to empathize with Stephen, because we too probably won't recall or understand much of what is going on; c) really establishes the authenticity of the novels. Like I said before, the stories end up not sounding like "Modern-day hero, but in the past!", but more like "These are relatively realistic adventures on a ship that doesn't magically sail itself through the power of narrative fiction, but rather sails through the interplay of a myriad of sails and ropes (in fiction)"
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Mar 24, 2011 23:21
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Pharnakes posted:I take it cocoa leaves is basicaly unrefined cocaine? Assuming we're talking about Coca leaves (as opposed to Cocoa leaves, which are different)... chewing the leaves themselves is a stimulant, and has been used by Native Americans in South America as a tradition since times immemorial. It also cuts down on nausea when you're going up and down the Andes. And Cocaine comes from the Coca plant through some process I don't really know about.
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Apr 11, 2011 22:45
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One bit of casting I wasn't crazy about in the movie was Billy Boyd as Barrett Bonden. I'd always pictured Bonden as a big, burly guy, and not a Hobbit.
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Aug 27, 2013 02:45
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