The Thirteen Gun Salute

By Patrick O'Brian

For as good as the last two books were this one was 368 looooong slooooow pages.  How can this be you ask?  Doesn't this book begin with Jack capturing more prizes, and getting reinstated to the Post-Captain list at his former seniority?  Yes and yes.  Then the book jumps ahead many months as they are almost to the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, a piratical Malay state in the South China Sea.  Their duty is to bring Mr. Fox, the Foreign Office envoy, to beat the French in getting a treaty signed.

The problem was that the negotiations were not really part of the story, every thing gets wrapped up mostly off screen, so to speak.  It took me a while to finish reading this book because I just couldn't get into the book.  Starting after Jack gets restored to the service and continuing till almost the end, I felt the story dragged on and on.  Even the side quests of Jack and Stephen seemed uninspired.  Stephens especially seemed like it didn't fit into the rest of the story.

I sure hope the next book is better.