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Book Review of The Truelove (Aubrey / Maturin, Bk 15)

The Truelove (Aubrey / Maturin, Bk 15)
reviewed on + 211 more book reviews


Some rambles:

Unfortunately I didn't read the prior book "Nutmeg of Surprise" first, and I missed out on some stuff.

This book is also called Clarissa Oakes, I'm not sure why they changed it to Truelove for the US Market.

Enjoyable, much more action oriented for Aubrey, and a lot of psycho/social observations for Maturin


It's part of a series of books that are one long voyage (1813?). In some sense, it's a more efficient technique for both the writer and the reader, most importantly it works.

Much of the internal dialog is switched to letters that Aubrey/Maturin write to their respective wives. I like this format better, and cleaner than the way the author normally writes some of the stuff that is in the heads of the characters. The author has done this before, but it really is done well this time. Maturin mostly journal writes, his letters to his wife are criminally sparse.

I like this series, and I like that the author is a 'foodie', he really likes to describe the meals and pudding. I bought the cookbook Lobscouse and Spotted Dog (Grossman and Thomas, 1997, ISBN 9780393320947 or 9-393-32094-4) from a used online book vendor, and hope to try some of the recipes. Allegedly the cookbook translates 19th century food ingredients to more modern tastes.