Rating: 
Summary: Ho-hum, sea-shanty
Review:
The continuing story of the exploits of Aubery and Maturin.
A mixture of derring-do, and unrequited romance and high seas.
I like the story, however I feel that the fact that there is a series of stories perhaps devalues each individual story. I also would like to be sure that the action parts are based on some reality - the enthusiasts for the series say that it is, and the writing has a realistic historical flavour; however the 'top-gallants a lee, bring 'er about, nicely lads' stuff could just as easily be gobbledook for all I know.
As a true son of Erin, I am quite happy with the reversal of usual stereotype - to have the English partner (Aubery) as a bluff, rash, unreflective type, and the Irish (or Catalan) type as reserved, intellectual, reflective but deadly.
p.s. this one also has requited and unrequited long distance love, perhaps to interest the Signoritas.
Rating: 
Summary: A fine introduction to Patrick O'Brian's work
Review: As other reviewers have noted, O'Brian is a wonderful writer. His ability to describe the early ninteenth century world of life on a naval ship is remarkable for the depth of his knowledge and way he can bring events to life. One can almost small the sea! O'Brian has a good ear for dialogue and his characters, particularly the principals Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, emerge as fully rounded, utterly credible figures. O'Brian's descriptions of battles at sea are riveting, but he is equally good at conveying the thrill scientific discovery in the form of Maturin's enthusiastic collection of animals and insects in the best Darwinian manner. Where I have a slight reservation about the book (and therefore four rather than five stars) is that the plot tends to wander a little -- a bit like H.M.S. Surprise's own journey. Like many ocean voyages, one realises that the journey is probably more important then the destination. Nevertheless, "HMS Surprise" is a wonderful, evocative book. A pleasure to read and (as it was for me) a fine introduction to O'Brian's novels.
Rating: 
Summary: A Voyage of Friendship
Review: Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy in the midst of the wars against Napoleon, and his particular friend Stephen Maturin, physician, naturalist and intelligence agent, journey from England to India and back in this epic of friendship. Along the way there are battles to be fought, storms to be weathered, and love to be found.This is also the first book of the twenty-volume "Aubreyad" where we encounter the Surprise, that sleek, swift frigate which transports the two friends through so many other oceans and adventures. But this is not your Napoleonic technothriller. No, this is a cut above Ramage, Bolitho, even Hornblower. This is literature, and there are observations on relationships between men, women, men and women, men and the sea, and the ultimate questions of the human existence, wrapped up in language wonderfully witty and hilariously humorous. This, and the others in the canon, are not books that will be read once lightly and forgotten. No, you will come back to them time and again for the pure pleasure of the reading and to discover something fresh each time.
Rating:
Summary: Awe inspiring sea adventure!
Review: H.M.S. Surprise is an extraordinary sea going adventure. Patrick O'Brien's masterful character development of Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin continues. In this adventure, we see our heroes in action in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. We also gain a closer glimpse of their unique friendship as well as their personalities and desires. These glimpses can only be seen as these men go to sea and face the inevitable hardship of life during war. In short we see both Lucky Jack Aubrey and Dr. Maturin fall in love. Of course both fall for very different types of ladies, and that reveals much about both men. Lucky Jack falls for a respectable woman with a dowry that he cannot marry because he is in debt and faces debtor's prison. Dr. Maturin's love is unrequited for a widow who treats him cruelly. We see Dr. Maturin imprisoned as a spy and Captain Aubrey's expected successful rescue. The backdrop for the conclusion is the British colonies in India. After saving a Company ship and its very valuable cargo from the French, Captain Aubrey is handsomely rewarded. His reward is large enough to get him almost out of debt and free to marry. Dr. Maturin proposes, ends up defending his honor in a duel, and loses the girl to an American in the end. Patrick O'Brien's sense of detail and historical accuracy is awe inspiring. This is an adventure that I highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome seafaring fun. A must read!!
Review: HMS Surprise, by Patrick O'Brian is the third in the Aubrey/Maturin series of novels about the British Navy during the early 19th Century. This tome starts with Captain Jack Aubrey, now a post captain, temporarily commanding the large frigate HMS Lively while the primary captain is busy with another task. His job as captain is the boring job of running a blockade, and he is bored, broke, and trying to find a way to find enough money to marry his sweetheart, Sophie Williams. Thanks to some intervention by his good friend and surgeon, Stephen Maturin, he is given command of HMS Surprise, a small frigate which Jack served on as a young midshippman. Jack is charged with the task of protecting the East-India fleet from destruction and confication by the French. His job takes him to the great India subcontinent, and the rich sights and smells that go with it. Along the way we see an amazing storm at sea, the damage that can be inflicted on a ship and her crew while rounding Cape Horn, an amazing act of surgery performed by Stephen Maturin. The final battle that pits "Lucky" Jack Aubrey, the Surprise and a vastly outgunned fleet of ships against the far superior French forces. The story more is clear, fast paced, and exciting. Just like Jack now commands a ship he knew is his youth, HMS Surprise moves along at a comfortable enjoyable pace as O'Brian comes into his element at writing great stories. The story is exciting, fun to read, and the characters are truly interesting and well developed. As anyone who is interested in 19th century "ships of the line", naval history, or just love a great story, this book is sure to please.
Rating:
Summary: my pick of all 20
Review: I absolutely love this series-- and I love all 20 books. But, HMS SURPRISE remains my favourite. This well-thumbed, dog-eared edition is one of the most utilized books in my collection. Perhaps the reason SURPRISE has so much appeal is it equally balances Stephen's natural/espionage world with Jack's naval adventures. There are some wonderful scenes; including an interlude with Diana Villiers in India.
For those uninitiated and looking for a page-turner, this is the adventurous plot for you. I don't often recommend readers start with MASTER AND COMMANDER, I often tell them to dive into SURPRISE, get caught up in the action, and then feel it absolutely necessary to back track and meet the characters at the beginning.
Read it and get hooked: for after this you'll rush out and buy the whole of the Aubrey-Maturin series.
Rating:
Summary: My Rieiew
Review: I found the book pleasure to my reading senses. I was on the edge of my seat waiting to turn to the next page. This is by far the best of the Aubrey series.
I found Doctor Stephen character very entertaining if I was a character in a book I would like to be him he is smart and sophisticated can do complicated math in his head in short time I really enjoyed the way O'Brian portrayed this character.
I really loved the way that the vocabulary of the book fits in with each character it is very enjoyable to read. When I read this book and I finish I just want to read it again and again.
This book really shows how life would be upon a real Man of War vessel it is amazing and how they were punished and taken care of liked being dragged the length of the ship. I would recommend this book to any one who enjoys a great novel.
Rating: 
Summary: HMS Surprise
Review: I know this is heresy but I found "HMS Surprise" to be a little plodding. I know the dialog, settings, etc are historically accurate but I find myself feeling as I did in English literature class; This isn't that enjoyable but I know it's good for me. I felt the same with "Master and Commander" and "Post Captain." I have read many historical novels, "Sharpe's Rifles", the Hornblower series twice as well as the Drinkwater books (highly recommended), all of them very good to excellent. I will continue to read O'Brian's books but I think one every five years will do just fine.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely Satisfying
Review: I, like many others I suspect, was sucked into reading the Aubrey/Maturin series by the Peter Weir film. Little did I know that the books would be so much deeper than the film or topic would lead one to believe. Stephen Maturin: physician, scientist, naturalist, spy (and Patrick O'Brian alter ego) studies people (including his great friend Jack Aubrey - and himself) dispassionately, and we are the beneficiaries of his study. Jack Aubrey: ship's captain, sentimentalist, musician and astronomer is a man of the past - he is a hero with flaws but he holds honor and duty above himself (usually).
H.M.S. Surprise is the best of the early series. We get adventure: a daring rescue of Stephen by Jack, a brilliant sea maneuver led by the Surprise on the Indian Ocean. We get a novel of manners: Maturin's and Aubrey's continued wooing of Diana Villiers and Sophia Williams. We get a marvelous frigate and her crew - O'Brian's depiction of the Surprise is a microcosm of the world at the time of Napoleon. And my, the Surprise is yar!
Some of my friends have expressed surprise (pun intended, and Aubrey would love it!) that a feminist landlubber would admire the same series that Charlton Heston and other manly men have loved before me. My response is that great writing is enough. There are few female characters in Aubrey/Maturin, and those that O'Brian includes are not particularly sympathetic (although I can imagine every actress alive wanting to play Diana Villiers), but it doesn't matter when I feel as much a part of the crew as Pullings or Bonden.
When you get down to it, Patrick O'Brian is just a great writer. At moments I have been reminded of Melville, Austen, and Robertson Davies. His grasp of the technical is thorough. His ability to share the historical feeling of the period is amazing. On top of all this, these books are just page-turners! I was gripped from the moment I opened the novel.
A previous reviewer mentioned that if you read the first three books in the series, you'll read all twenty. If the next seventeen are half as good as H.M.S. Surprise, I'll be singing Patrick O'Brian's praises for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books of perhaps the best naval series ever
Review: In praising Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books I am on well-trodden ground. In a sense, it is superfluous to do so: so many people, of such varied and excellent taste, have praised these books to the skies that further lauds from the modest likes of me are hardly necessary. Still, I'm glad to add my words. These stories concern Jack Aubrey, a ship captain in the English Navy at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, and his great friend Stephen Maturin, an Irish-Catalan doctor and spy who in the first book joins Jack's crew as ship doctor. As H. M. S. Surpries opens, political machinations cost Jack his prize money (earned in the previous book0, and Stephen's cover in Spain is blown. As a result, and also because Stephen is scheming to see his lover Diana again (who has been taken by her keeper Richard Canning to India), Jack takes command of the aged frigate H.M.S. Surprise, and is sent to Cambodia (stopping in India) to deliver the new British envoy to the Sultan of Kampong. Thus the setup for a long, wonderful, account of the voyage to the Orient and back. The pleasures of this book are remarkably varied: high comedy, such as the famous drunken sloth incident; high adventure, as the men of the Surprise battle not only the South Atlantic at its fiercest, but also the French; and bitter disappointment and even tragedy, in Stephen's seesaw relationship with Diana, as well as Stephen's involvement with a young Indian girl. The pleasures of this book, however, are not restricted to a fine plot. The ongoing development of the characters of Jack and Stephen, and of their complex and fully described friendship, is a major achievement. In addition, the many minor characters are fascinating: the envoy Mr. Stanhope, Stephen's Indian friend, the various ship's officers and men, other ship captains, and so on. And O'Brian's depiction of the building of an effective crew, the relationship of captain to officers to men, is another fascinating detail, and something he revisits from book to book, as Jack encounters different crews in different circumstances. Finally, O'Brian is a fine writer of prose, with a faintly old-fashioned style, well poised to evoke the atmosphere of the time of which he writes to readers of our time, and consistently quotable, in his dry fashion. Jack and Stephen are heroic in certain aspects of their characters, but they are both multi-faceted characters, with terrible flaws and endearing crotchets in addition to their accomplishments. And they truly come across to this reader as characters of their time, and not 20th Century people cast back into the past. Even Stephen's very contemporary racial and religious attitudes are well-motivated by his background, and expressed in language which reeks wonderfully of his time: "Stuff. I have the greatest esteem for Jews, if anyone can speak of a heterogeneous great body of men in such a meaningless, illiberal way." I recommend all these books highly. It was with great difficulty the first time through the series that I restrained myself, upon finishing each book, from immediately starting in on the next one.
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