The Hundred Days [Paperback]

One of the best novelists since Jane Austen.... I havent read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick OBrian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldnt stop. The best historical novels ever written& On every page Mr. OBrian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people dont, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives. It has been something of a shock to find myselfan inveterate reader of girl booksobsessed with Patrick OBrians Napoleonic-era historical novels& What keeps me hooked are the evolving relationships between Jack and Stephen and the women they love. I devoured Patrick OBrians 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog. I fell in love with his writing straightaway, at first with [OBrians] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of todays putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade. The Aubrey-Maturin series& far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart. OBrians Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Gripping and vivid& a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit. There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his. Patrick OBrian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars. US