white_hart

Having been disappointed, on reading Desolation Island, to find that although Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin had set out for Botany Bay the book didn't actually get them there and readers were therefore deprived of the opportunity to see Stephen encountering a wombatt, I was pleased to find that the next in the series starts with them arriving in the East Indies having called at Botany Bay and taken on board a number of wombats, one of which is attempting to eat Jack's best hat as the book begins. Sadly for wombat-fanciers (although happily for the wombats, given ensuing events) they are left behind in Cape Town as Jack and Stephen take ship back to England where Jack's new ship, the Acasta is waiting for him, while Stephen is needed to undertake more intelligence work in Spain. However, war has been declared between England and the USA and, following a chain of unfortunate events, Jack and Stephen end up as prisoners of war in Boston, where Stephen once again encounters Diana Villiers.

I think this may have been my favourite of the series so far; it seems to have achieved a perfect balance of atmospheric description, exciting action and sparkling comedy of manners, and I'm eager to read the rest of the series. Happily, due to a fortuitous discovery in the Oxfam bookshop last week I now have a complete set so will be doing just that over the next couple of years.

***

Rivers of London: Detective Stories is the latest combined volume of the spin-off comics from Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London books. This one contains four short, self-contained casefics, recounted by Peter as part of the assessment process for his promotion to Detective Constable. The stories themselves are fairly slight, but they're entertaining enough and typically packed with geeky in-jokes (I was particularly delighted by the law firm "Bock, Loupe and Stag"), and also provides some interesting insights into some other characters from the series.