Master and Commander is the first of the many novels about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, a few of which had plot lines stitched together for the 2003 feature film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World starring Russell Crowe.

Aubrey is a captain in the British Navy as the eighteenth century gives way to the nineteenth. He meets Maturin during in the opening chapters and the latter becomes surgeon on Aubrey’s ship, Sophie. The novel details their adventures in the Mediterranean Sea during the summer of 1800.

This is an enjoyable and intelligent novel, but it can be a difficult read if, like me, you’re a complete stranger to large sailing vessels. Slowly, as O’Brian spins tales of sea battles both exciting and heart-breaking, I began to get a gist of nautical life—but I don’t think it really sank in. My eyes would begin to glaze when O’Brian would spend multiple paragraphs detailing the minutiae of shipboard life.

That’s my only quarrel, however, with an otherwise very engaging book. The main characters are compelling while being quite human, at turns admirable, stubborn, short-sighted, wise, or contradictory.

In particular, the personality and ego struggles between Capt. Aubrey and his impressive Lieutenant James Dillon are maddeningly pitch perfect: maddeningly because of the potential for distruction in their unspoken battle, and yet quite believable all the same.