Talk:Desolation Island (novel)

Desolation Island is currently linked to the Kerguelen Islands article -

- is it really correct? In The Thirteen Gun Salute there's following piece of dialogue, disproving that identification:

"Kerguelen is what some people call Desolation Island, is it not, sir?" asked Richardson. "So they do. But it is not our Desolation Island, which is smaller, farther south and east. And there is another in about fifty-eight south, to larboard just as you clear the Magellan Strait. I believe there are a good many places that have been called Desolation at one time or another, which is a pretty comment on a sailor's life." This should be somewhat cleared, in my opinion; and relinked, if the location relates to any actually existing location in the southern hemisphere. --87.249.145.69 (talk) 19:33, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

POB often puts in material to disguise his sources. In this case POB's description of the harbour is taken from Cook's description of Christmas Harbour on Kerguelen.Dabbler (talk) 18:15, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Reviews 20 years apart

Fru1tbat I am not following your objection to the lead remarking strongly positive reviews 20 years apart. I do not grasp what was in the lead or reviews section that was not in the reviews cited. The full quote from Day of the Ls Angeles Times is this: “And O'Brian's Southern Ocean! It is beyond compare. In "Desolation Island," the fifth of the series, Aubrey's relentless pursuit of the Dutch warship Waakzaamheid in the roaring ocean below the southern tip of Africa, day after day in frightful weather, stirs the emotions of dread and hope in every reader.”

Beyond compare, that is quotable. Southern ocean, that is quotable. Your version ignores that one review was 19 or 20 years earlier than the other, which is a noteworthy point. Reviews most often appear in a cluster at initial publication. Here we have a re-issue and new, strong reviews. I believe there are more reviews at initial publication, but paywalls block them to me, in British or Irish newspapers. I work with what I can find, and hope other editors someday find more published reviews. Anyway, may I once again include the point about reviews at re-issue being as strong as at initial publication? —Prairieplant (talk) 17:10, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate you starting this topic, and I'm happy to discuss my reasoning. I don't have a problem referencing the time between the reviews, although I'm not sure it's a detail that's needed in the lead. The way it's currently worded (noting "at initial publication" and "20 years after initial publication at the re-issue") is unnecessarily verbose in my opinion, especially considering we're currently talking about only 2 reviews. I think it's fine here for the lead just to summarize that the book has been reviewed positively, and save the details for later in the article. I don't find the mention especially noteworthy, I guess. The author takes a few paragraphs to discuss the series as a whole, but the piece isn't a broad retrospective, just a review of a later book in the series that provides a bit of context. (That's how it reads to me, anyway...)

My main objection to the quote is with the wording as well, which seems a bit awkward. Your text before my revert - "A later review, in 1998, found the chase scene with the Dutch ship in the southern ocean to be 'beyond compare'." - slightly misrepresents the author's words, which (as you've quoted above) makes a somewhat more general comment about the setting, then a specific comment about that particular chase sequence. You quoted the source's words but rearranged them in a way that I felt changed their meaning, maybe not egregiously, but enough to warrant en edit.

I'd love to find more reviews to fill out the article a little better, and I did search myself, but I couldn't find any freely available either, unfortunately.

--Fru1tbat (talk) 18:05, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Fru1tbat, Some other editors are slowly working through the articles about this series, to standardize the formats a bit more, and to include more from printed books. I am hoping that when this book's article is next up, some reviews from printed books will be added. That is why my phrasing in a way, anticipates more reviews, more comments, on this particular novel. In the period of the re-issue of the earlier novels, many reviewers tended to write a review of all they had read so far, rather than the book just released. So many books in such a short time, far shorter than it took to write them. The article for the first novel, Master and Commander is now up to the mark of the outline that a group of editors put together as making a good article. That outline is in the talk page for that article. Some progress is made in later articles, and you can see in the talk page for each when the green check mark is placed for a specific goal. I had done Review sections for many of the novels, and I had not done them the right way, so I made a point of trying to distill the reviews I found in a better way, ahead of the final versions, by an editor with many books on paper at hand. There is a wide range in number of reviews I found across 20 novels. I hope it gets evened out with printed essays especially for this novel. I was also instructed in the importance of bringing the main points of the reviews up to the lead. I am not the world's best writer, ta da, but I keep trying to get the main points out. These books are such fun! --Prairieplant (talk) 23:47, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

@Prairieplant: Ok, thanks for the info! I don't watch the articles for all the books in the series (though I've read the entire series), so I wasn't aware of any activity on the group as a whole. I'm ok with your most recent version of the paragraph in question. --Fru1tbat (talk) 13:13, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Plot summary edits

I do not understand what you mean by “British style”, or how that would change the position of Louisa Wogan. Mrs. Wogan’s value as an American intelligence source had been destroyed when she was caught back in England. She was sentenced to be hanged, which was lessened to penal transport to Australia by the actions of a high British authority with whom she apparently had known rather well. Thus, her usefulness as an American agent was gone. The reason Joseph Banks placed Maturin in close association with her onboard ship was to allow him time to mine her for information on the extent of the American intelligence service in Britain, a task all the more important in the face of deteriorating relationships between the two nations and the imminent threat of war. That, and placing Maturin out of the way in the case his powers were diminishing being the second and unstated reason for the mission. Maturin, however, not only learned a great deal about the US intelligence service, but he also took the opportunity to plant misinformation in the hands of Mrs. Wogan in the hopes of undermining the various French intelligence services. The bogus documents he created and passed to her through Herapath he termed “poison.” Through them he hoped to cause American and subsequently French intelligence services to think that certain French operatives were double agents under the pay of Britain, hopefully causing distrust, internal purges, interservice assassinations, and a general disruption in their intelligence function.

The wound to Capt. Aubrey is important because it knocked him senseless, nearly killed him, put his leg in jeopardy and gave rise to the idea in Grant’s head that Capt. Aubrey was unable to command, and that he should supersede him. Grant had been undermining Aubrey for some time. However, when the ship struck ice Grant behaved admirably as they struggled together to keep the ship afloat. When the crew were exhausted and the ship low in the water a crisis was at hand. Aubrey would have preferred Grant stay with the ship, but he did not begrudge him taking the boats, and made sure the boats were provisioned for their long journey north to the Cape. Regardless of the relationship between the two men, the injury to Capt. Aubrey is mentioned in the next paragraph of the article, so the earlier editors apparently thought it worth mentioning. My thinking is that it is better to mention it in time and place, rather than bringing it up later as a partial explanation. Thanks for your consideration. AliciaZag13 (talk) 23:51, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

AliciaZag13 British style meant you were adding American style text, requiring someone to come after you to fix it to British style, which is the form of English for this article. You can see that on the edit text page with a template about the English variation Engvar up in the first few lines. The second point is that Aubrey gets seriously injured often, it is war. Most of the injuries are bad, but as a lead character in the series, he always recovers. I agree it was a bad injury, but it is not crucial to the plot line, as he recovers, and the plot summary never says he recovered, and does not need to say that. Grant never thought Aubrey was more capable as a Captain than himself. The injury let Grant add an item to his already long list in his mind bolstering his view of his own abilities, and his inability to follow the orders of his captain under his inappropriate view for a man in the Royal Navy, so causes disruption and splits the crew. The change was just more words, when plot summaries are required to be concise, no more than 800 words. The summary is already longer than 800 words, so a change with non-essential actions was reverted. I hope that is clear to you now. -- Prairieplant (talk) 05:09, 16 June 2022 (UTC)