I so love your Aubreyad posts so much. I haven’t touched the books since I binged them one lonely middle school summer 20 years ago. Your posts are making me itch to pick them up again and uncover all the subtlety and loveliness I missed in my first read through thanks to my underdeveloped frontal lobe. Thank you for the inspiration, fond memories and lovely writing!
Thoroughly enjoyed this. It helped me process how painful it was to get to Martin's last scene in the series. It's the kind of tragic fate O'Brian reserves for his character studies like Dillon, Clonfert or the envoy Fox. At least he got the chance to apologize to Stephen. A lot of characters receive grace but not them. It struck me as harsh, maybe even too harsh, even if plausible, but clearly O'Brian has some justified satirical targets in the clergy and mindless wealth-seekers here. I also always thought Martin's name was meaningful: too similar to Maturin, basically formed by taking some letters out of Maturin. As if he is missing a few essential qualities that Stephen has.
There is another satirical target here more specific to my life, and that's the birder-hobbyist who has no bigger-picture morals, or not ones that actually stick. People who care about their special interest but who do not find it leads them to improve the broader world somewhat. And as a result his hobby ultimately turns to ashes in his mouth (with some help from mercury.) And of course Stephen couldn't be more different than that — which felt like a fundamental difference in their characters from the start. Along with the religiosity/moral panic that is Martin's undoing, that critique of the valueless hobbyist is what feels most instructive for our time.
I so love your Aubreyad posts so much. I haven’t touched the books since I binged them one lonely middle school summer 20 years ago. Your posts are making me itch to pick them up again and uncover all the subtlety and loveliness I missed in my first read through thanks to my underdeveloped frontal lobe. Thank you for the inspiration, fond memories and lovely writing!
Thoroughly enjoyed this. It helped me process how painful it was to get to Martin's last scene in the series. It's the kind of tragic fate O'Brian reserves for his character studies like Dillon, Clonfert or the envoy Fox. At least he got the chance to apologize to Stephen. A lot of characters receive grace but not them. It struck me as harsh, maybe even too harsh, even if plausible, but clearly O'Brian has some justified satirical targets in the clergy and mindless wealth-seekers here. I also always thought Martin's name was meaningful: too similar to Maturin, basically formed by taking some letters out of Maturin. As if he is missing a few essential qualities that Stephen has.
There is another satirical target here more specific to my life, and that's the birder-hobbyist who has no bigger-picture morals, or not ones that actually stick. People who care about their special interest but who do not find it leads them to improve the broader world somewhat. And as a result his hobby ultimately turns to ashes in his mouth (with some help from mercury.) And of course Stephen couldn't be more different than that — which felt like a fundamental difference in their characters from the start. Along with the religiosity/moral panic that is Martin's undoing, that critique of the valueless hobbyist is what feels most instructive for our time.