Jane Austen of the Sea?

It's my husband's fault, I never thought myself the type to read historical novels of a naval stripe and here I've waded into the two foremost sagas of the genre.  It started with the mini-series of 'Horatio Hornblower' and a thrift store DVD copy of 'Master and Commander' and led to reading the entire Horatio series and the first three of the Aubrey books.  I really liked the Horatio books, even if I could never come to love the main character, it was quite interesting, surprising, well written, decent characters and plots, and a most enjoyable read.  I started the Aubrey books eagerly, having read comments of the humor to be found therein, the witty banter of intelligent characters, an immersive story, and some calling the author the 'Jane Austen of the Sea.'

I'm not sure I read the right books or perhaps I read the wrong comments?  I gave it a chance, three chances in fact, surely such a popular work with so many volumes must deserve a second and third chance, as I pushed through three volumes of the tale, but it never got better, I never found my sea-going Austen.  The writing was excellent, but the plot dragged like an anchor, the characters were not at all likable, let alone lovable, where was the 'intelligent characters' I had been promised?  There was a little sparse humor, but overall I found the entire experience depressing, especially the tone of the books.  I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, there was life and movement and color and danger and everything interesting.  While I was not a huge personal fan of Horatio Hornblower, I loved his brilliance, boldness, and determination to do what he knew he must, even if his self-loathing drove me to distraction and the sea itself, the ships, the other characters added plenty of color and interest.

Being a student of biology and medicine, I enjoyed the advent of another dabbler in the series, to some extent, but he seemed more an alien presence than a human biologist.  The most human being in the entire three books was a sloth!  The whole work reeked of silent misanthropy and was rather discouraging to any human who happens to read it.  And the title Jane Austen of the Sea is truly undeserved, while he may use words with the skill of Miss Austen, the author is no comparison to her in any other light.  She was a keen observer of the human condition, society, and manners, she is vastly funny and actually likes people, even if she is forever making sport of them.  Her characters are human, some are even likable, not mere caricatures one has no interest in.  She can make a novel with very little adventure interesting and memorable, whereas this series takes adventure and exotic places and makes it less exciting and interesting than an interview with Lady Catherine De Borough.

There is no human color in these books.  It lacks the mark of the 'classic' which though often dark or ugly in dealing with the human condition, at least offered some hope that things could be better, that there was such a thing as virtue, and that by strength of will and determination and discipline, a character could grow, could change, and thus so could we.  Dickens used his novels to spur social change.  Austen observed social mores of her day and reflected on the unchanging nature of the human heart, her heroines were flawed but not immutable and we love them because they do in fact grow, which gives us hope in our turn.  O'Brian gives us two dimensional characters, that while they undergo extreme experiences, change very little, at least for the better.  There is not a single character I liked even a little, save the sloth.  Hornblower too is filled with flawed characters, difficult circumstances, and a main character that is hard to love, but you do love him, in a distant sort of way, for he is human, but Aubrey is a great dumb brute of a dog, jumping up with muddy paws to maul your best frock in happy unwitting delight, while decent enough when retrieving birds, he's a complete nuisance elsewhere.  The doctor is a brilliant but naive creature, as ignorant about his own heart as he is about the human race.

It is written in the style of the classics: flowing lines, wonderful words, and a world in which one might lose oneself, but it is not a world I wish to inhabit, for the true classics were filled with virtue and hope along with the darker and more despairing airs of the world, O'Brian has left the former out and wallows only in the latter.  We are left with indifference and misery but have no solace at all, either for the characters or humanity in general, which makes O'Brian no Austen, certainly not a 'classic' writer at all, but rather the heir of that more depressing and appalling literary tradition known as Modern Lit though in a classic setting, a more appropriate comparison I believe would be the John Steinbeck of the Sea: good writing but overall depressing view of humanity, no plot to speak of, and characters with little or no likability.

I found more hope in toiling through Mordor with Frodo, the journey seemed quicker as well, even with Gollum as a companion.  I found 'Persuasion,' as close as Jane Austen gets to a sea-faring novel, infinitely more interesting, if less lively.  'A Tale of Two Cities,' is less depressing, even though the main character rots in jail with a death sentence looming over his head for the majority of it.  'Les Miserables' though filled with misery and wretchedness is infinitely more enthralling.  I'd much rather sail to the Dark Island among the Dawn Treader's crew than spend a day aboard the Surprise, for I fear all of O'Brian's characters unwittingly work for the NICE.  C.S. Lewis warns against this lack of virtue, this inadvertent misanthropy so rampant amongst modern souls in his essay 'The Abolition of Man,' and these books offer ample proof of it, for this indeed is a 'book without a chest.'

If you are looking for a good sea-faring story, try Horatio Hornblower.  If you are looking for a voyage into the human soul and condition, try any of the classics.  If you are looking for a depressing study of modernity draped in archaic guise, the O'Brian books might be for you.