The Nutmeg of Consolation is the fourteenth historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by British author Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1991. The story is set during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.

Building a schooner on an island in the South China Sea as food supplies grow scant, Aubrey and his shipmates are attacked by pirates then rescued by a Chinese ship large enough to hold them all as far as Batavia, where Raffles has a ship for them. Aubrey names the sweet-smelling ship from one of the sultan's many titles, Nutmeg of Consolation. They sail into the Celebes Sea, where battle commences.

This novel constitutes the second of a five-novel circumnavigation of the globe; other novels in this voyage include The Thirteen Gun Salute, Clarissa Oakes/The Truelove, The Wine-Dark Sea, and The Commodore.

Reviews written soon after publication were generally impressed with the main characters, drawn well, though opposite in abilities. It was described as "Another in O'Brian's stylish epic series" and the bemused doctor was "as always, the tale's most interesting character and constantly preoccupied with flora, fauna, and good conversation". The novel is rich with details and contrasts: "the chief joys are in the details of the food, drink and clothes of the era, with those of the rain forests, kangaroos and platypuses added here. On the other hand, early Sydney's squalor is matched by its brutality." They noted that "O'Brian certainly knows his stuff about 19th-century seamanship (although landlubber readers may find themselves confused by some of the technical terminology)." and that the ship ends this novel "amidst the cruelty of Botany Bay, the penal colony in New South Wales." Dean King remarked the strength of her specific and positive review, when it was possible that a review for an author in his late seventies might suggest it was a nice try, but not keeping up to standard.

Mark Horowitz in the Los Angeles Times described the novels so far written as a long story of two characters, living at the dawn of the 19th century but in novels that are truly modern. "Sterne did quite well without one. . . . I remember Bourville's definition of a novel as a work in which life flows in abundance, swirling without pause: or as you might say without an end, an organized end. And there is at least one Mozart quartet that stops without the slightest ceremony: most satisfying when you get used to it." (USA edition)

  • 2006, August Blackstone Audio audio cassette (USA edition)
  • 2007, March Blackstone Audiobooks audio MP3 CD (USA edition)
  • 2007, March Blackstone Audiobooks audio CD (USA edition)
  • 2007, March Blackstone Audiobooks audio cassette (USA edition)
  • 2008 Playaway audio CD (USA edition)
  • 2011, December W. W. Norton e-book (USA edition)
  • 2011, December Harper e-book (UK edition)
  • 2013 August Audible Studios (UK edition) (USA edition)

The process of reissuing the novels prior to this novel and The Letter of Marque was in full swing in 1991, as the whole series gained a new and wider audience, as Mark Howowitz describes.

<blockquote>Two of my favorite friends are fictitious characters; they live in more than a dozen volumes always near at hand. Their names are Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and their creator is a 77-year-old novelist named Patrick O'Brian, whose 14 books about them have been continuously in print in England since the first, "Master and Commander," was published in 1970.

O'Brian's British fans include T. J. Binyon, Iris Murdoch, A. S. Byatt, Timothy Mo and the late Mary Renault, but, until recently, this splendid saga of two serving officers in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars was unavailable in this country, apart from the first few installments which went immediately out of print. Last year, however, W. W. Norton decided to reissue the series in its entirety, and so far nine of the 14 have appeared here, including the most recent chapter, The Nutmeg of Consolation.</blockquote>

References

  • The Nutmeg of Consolation at the Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project