Some readers have zero tolerance for the genre of seagoing adventures. To such landlubbers, nautical language all sounds distressingly like shiver-me- mizzenmast or belay-the-taffrail or somesuch, and they quickly jump ship in search of books written in more accessible prose. Too bad for them, because they have therefore missed the high-sailing novels of Patrick O'Brian.
And there are plenty of them to be missed. The Wine-Dark Sea (Norton; 261 pages; $22) is the 16th installment of what devotees call the Aubrey/Maturin novels. All are set in the early 19th century, during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, and all feature the...
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