Aubrey’s Honour: The Setting of the Sail

The Final Voyage of Admiral Jack Aubrey and Dr Stephen Maturin

De: Sasa Fegic

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

In the long ebb of empire and memory, Aubrey’s Honour charts the final passages of two men who were never merely characters, but forces of nature shaped by war, friendship, and the sea itself.
Told with the grace, gravity, and grit that fans of O’Brian’s world have come to revere, this book does not seek to inflate the legend — it seeks to understand the men beneath it. Admiral Jack Aubrey, once the thunder of the quarterdeck, now stalks the halls of power with a sailor’s unease and a tactician’s eye. Dr. Stephen Maturin, naturalist and spy, walks more quietly, but never without a scalpel in his hand and a secret in his coat pocket.
What unfolds is not a victory lap, but a reckoning: with age, with ghosts, with the corrosive politics of peace. Through fogbound councils, shattered friendships, and remembered battles, Aubrey and Maturin face their final sea — not as heroes in search of glory, but as men in search of meaning.
This is what remains when the sails are furled and the orders grow quiet.
This is the wake — and the way.

The sea does not miss them. But they miss the sea.
It is a simple story, the way good stories are. A story of leaving, and staying. Of friendship without speeches. Of endings that don’t say they’re endings.
It is true. You can feel it in your bones. Like salt. Like wind. Like a ship passing hull-down over the horizon.

A Fair Tribute

The story, with it's AI narration, listens like the tale of someone watching events through a window. Some of the portrayals are wooden and two dimensional, reducing one of the great all time literary friendships to a vague observation by an uninterested third party. But in the end enough sentimentality and reference works it's way through to redeem the work as something that most lovers of this epic series will find comforting and satisfactory in it's own way.

AI reader failed pronunciation of commonly used names and terms

The writing completely missed the depth of plot and character of PO’s brilliant series. The only commonality with the original was the names of characters and places, often mispronounced. Flat , one inch deep.

A good attempt?

I wanted to like this book much better than I did. However, it was very disjointed. There were very little transitions between scenes. It was quite jarring. They were far, far too many chapters. it seemed like the author was writing an outline of a book instead of a polished book. However, he did try to capture the spirit of the characters.

Competent, but not complete

A worthy tribute, but written by someone not intimately familiar with the setting or the characters.
Diana Villiars, for example, is alive and well. Jack's fiddle playing is unremarkably awful, while in the main series he grew to be quite good, holding back when Maturin was within earshot to give Maturin's destroyed hands no embarrassment.

Still, I listened to the end because the heart of their remarkable friendship is intact.

A fundamental misunderstanding

I went back through and re-listen to this audiobook and it got worse. I didn’t realize at the first listen how much was actually wrong about this book. Originally I gave it 2 stars but now I have to knock it down to 1.

Possible AI: I think this book was written by AI. The mistakes it made and the flow just seem off putting now. I don’t think someone who had respect for Patrick O’Brien and this series would have forgotten that Bonden and Diane were both killed in previous books. Or that Pullings was made a post captain. Even Jacks children were characterized as much younger than they should be at this point. This all leads me to believe this book was written by AI or a very unobservant person who did not read the books.

The audiobook: this was hard. The AI reader was just bad. Mispronunciations were all over the place, even common words. It was also extremely flat. One of the charms of an audiobook is the reader acting out these characters, giving them some life. This did nothing to advance the story or color the characters.