[In the following review, Reardon offers a positive assessment of The Wine-Dark Sea, noting that—although the novels in O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series are similar—each installment remains enjoyable on its own.]

The Wine-Dark Sea, is the 16th in Patrick O'Brian's series of addictively readable Aubrey/Maturin novels of the British Navy at sea and at war in the early 19th Century.

For those already caught in the thrall of the exploits of Captain Jack Aubrey and his particular friend, Stephen Maturin, a surgeon, naturalist and spy of high skills, no more needs to be said. Skip the rest of this review. Go out and buy the book.

For those who have seen the handsomely packaged paperback copies of the series blossoming, seemingly all at once, across entire shelves of bookstores in the past year or so and remain puzzled over what all the fuss is about, a few words of explanation:

The best way to think of these novels is as a single 5,000-page book. But this is no overstuffed epic. It is, if you can imagine such a thing, an intimate book that just happens to be 5,000 pages long.

Also, you don't have to read it from beginning to end. You can pick up any book in the series—The Wine-Dark Sea, for example—and find all the deep pleasures of O'Brian's writing: his wonderfully exact language, his erudition, his delight in human idiosyncracy, his fine hand with character, his zest for the nitty-gritty of life and for life itself, his love of the sea and his ability to infect even committed landlubbers with a touch of that love.

In the latest installment, Stephen is on a secret mission to Peru and Chile, where he hopes to aid independence movements to the benefit of the British crown. Jack is there to help him. As usual, O'Brian's battle scenes are engrossing, and his storm chapters are even more riveting. But it's the in-between times, the closely observed and meticulously recorded mundane moments of the story (and of the sea journey) that bring the novel to full life.

The thing is, many of those who read one of the Aubrey/Maturin books end up wanting to read all of them—and not just once. I got hooked myself a couple of years ago when I read The Thirteen-Gun Salute, the 13th book in the series. At that time, it was still hard to find all the books, so I read several out of order. Now that they're all easily available, I've gone back to the beginning and I have started to read the series from first to last.

The books aren't without flaws. But part of their allure is O'Brian's ability to mask the flaws or even turn them to his advantage.

Consider the problem of nautical terms. O'Brian is obviously an expert on the sailing ships of the British Navy in the early 1800s. Most modern readers, this one included, aren't.

But rather than condescend, O'Brian takes the opposite approach and describes every action done to the rigging and every movement of the sails with sureness and exactitude, and with language no less beautiful for all its mystery to the non-sailor.

This, in an odd but undeniable way, gives the reader the comforting impression that someone's in charge and knows what's going on, and it's not necessary to worry one's head about such things.

In The Wine-Dark Sea, O'Brian writes, “The breeze was too far before the beam for the ships, steering southeast, to set studdingsails, but they were wearing everything they possessed, including that uncommon object a middle staysail, and they were making four knots.”

I admit that I don't know the meaning of “beam,” “studdingsails” or “wearing,” and I don't have a clue about “a middle staysail.” But I know that the ship is making headway despite some problems. And that's enough for me.

Another problem is that, two decades ago when O'Brian began the books, he didn't know they would catch on as they have or that there would eventually be so many of them. As a result, there was no master plan and no true beginning, middle and end to the 5,000-page book. While the characters perforce age over the years, they don't really change or grow. They're born, as it were, fully formed in the first book, and that's how they stay.

But that is why reading the books out of order or in no order at all isn't much of a problem. Each is essentially the same as any of the others.

The same characters face the same sort of battles, storms and intrigues in each installment. No book is very much better or worse than another. All are at the same very high, but not quite highest, level of literary quality.

This should lead to boredom, but it doesn't. I think that's because the experience of reading the books closely matches the experience of a long sea voyage. Think of them as a 5,000-mile journey over the oceans.

There are outbursts of excitement, danger and adventure, and there are long periods of the everyday. This is the way it is in each novel, and the way it is for the group of them.

You travel along with O'Brian and his characters in a world other than your own. You live through it all, the flash and the calm.

And as the latest book comes to an end, you can't help but smile as your companions are finally heading back to England after years at sea. Jack Aubrey, still boyish at times although deep into middle age, exclaims, laughing with joy, “I am so happy to be homeward-bound, and I am so happy, so very happy, to be alive.”