This whole book, the quest on the road to Samarcand, is to bring the nephew of Sullivan to school. Derrick's parents were missionaries in China, and had died. Sullivan and his partner Ross, and their crew members Li Han and Olaf were sailing the seas when Sullivan got the message. They sailed to China to pick up Derrick. After discussing what to do with Derrick, they decide he needs to go to school. School is in Samarcand. So they set out on the silk road.

Ugh. Li Han the cook, and Olaf, a crew want to go along on the road to samarcand.
P.49:
"... They grew more and more despondent as the preparations neared their end, and Derrick remembered uneasily that he had promised to ask whether they could go along with the expedition. He could not very well forget it, because Li Han kept reminding him, either by strong hints or else by unexpected delicacies, a shark's fin, an unusually large sea slug or a basket of loquats, all of which were intended to spur him on...."

Their guides for the trip: the three sons of the chief of the Kokonor Mongols.
P.58:
"He spoke to the mongols, obviously explaining who Derrick was, and then he said to derrick, 'this is Young hulagu, this is chingiz, and this is kubilai.' the mongols, hearing their names, bowed each in turn to derrick, and Derrick bowed back, wondering what was going on behind their impassive, expressionless faces. The eldest broke a piece of bread, dipped it in salt and handed it to derrick.
'don't say anything,' murmured sullivan. 'bite it clean in half and give it back.'
Derrick did so; the Mongols gave a hint of a smile and divided the remaining piece among themselves. then there was a silence until their fire had blazed away to glowing embers: one of the Mongols went back to the tethered horses, took some strips of dried horse flesh from under the deep saddle, impaled them on the long iron skewers that he carried threaded in his felt Boot and burnt them roughly on each side over the fire. he handed them round, and Sullivan whispered, 'it would be a good thing if you could eat your piece in seven bites.'
It nearly choked derrick, the raw, warm flesh, but he got it down, and immediately afterwards the Mongols scattered the ashes of their fire, remounted, and stood by while Sullivan attacked the car."

The professor tells Derrick some of the history of gengis Khan, whom the Mongol sons count as their ancestor:
P.127-8:
" 'yes,' said the professor, when they talked about the great Khan that evening, 'he was a very successful man in his way. that is to say, in his wars he caused the death of 18 million people. He made at least 18 million homes miserable, and he ravaged a larger tract of country than any man before or since: he did it so thoroughly that what was once useful land is now desert, and will be desert forever. he was a very successful man in that he accomplished all that he set out to do. But if I were descended from him, I should regard it as my greatest shame and I should conceal the fact. You may smile, derrick,' he said very seriously, 'but suppose you had a small house of your own, and some fields that gave you your living, and suppose that you belonged to a country that threatened no one. and then suppose one morning you found a troop of savage, hostile men feeding their horses on the crops that were to keep you through the winter, taking away and slaughtering your cattle and then coming to your house, bursting in, stealing all the things you valued and had possessed, perhaps, all your life – things that had been earned or made by your father and grandfather and handed down to you – robbing and then burning the house for fun. then suppose they killed your children and your wife, and carried you away to work or fight for them for the rest of your life. you would not consider those men very admirable characters, would you? No, nor do i. however hard you try to imagine that misery you will not realize a hundredth part of it: but if you do your best, and then multiply that wretchedness by 18 million, you will have a remote hint of a conception of how much misery a man who wages aggressive war can cause, and you will begin to understand why I should not be proud of being descended from chingiz khan, or any other aggressive barbarian, whatever Century or Nation he may belong to.' [Ivanka, Erick, Don Jr....]

In the time that this book was written, I suppose snow leopards were not endangered species.
P.205-6:
".... They had risen for days to the last high pass before tanglha-Tso, and they were just descending again towards the snow line when a thar dashed across their path, leaping madly over the rocks: immediately behind it came a snow leopard, gaining on it fast in huge bounds. The professor, who was in front, whipped up his rifle and fired. the Snow leopard seem to check in mid-air. It fell awkwardly on its side, staining the snow with Scarlet blood. It gave a great coughing roar and came straight for them. The professor was fumbling at his spectacles: he had knocked them sideways as he fired, and the others could not shoot without hitting him. but five yards from the professor's maddened pony the leopard fell, rolled, twitched and lay still. chingiz, racing through the line of plunging, panicking yaks, put a bullet between his eyes for good measure, but the great beast was already dead. Chingiz ran forward to take its whiskers for a charm, and the others gathered around it. Lying there on the snow it looked unbelievably large, with its thick yellowish fur and its long, deep-furred tail.
'big, big, big,' cried Ngandze in admiration, stretching out his hands: he bent, cut off an ear and ate it with every appearance of appetite.
'what an extraordinarily bold creature,' said the professor, who was still a little flustered.
'they are very bold,' said sullivan. 'I suppose it is because so few of them are killed.'
'professor,' murmured Ross in his ear, 'you were not aiming at the thar, were you?'
'I cannot deny it,' replied the professor, with a blush, 'but they were very close together, you know, and I assure you that I did fire on purpose.'

A Yeti begins stalking them when they are skirting the lands of the red hat lamas, a forbidden zone.
P.242:
"They made a tour of the far outside ring of the camp: they saw nothing, but still, when they came back, they felt twice as strong, warmer and encouraged. The wind was dropping fast, and the moon was higher now yet there was a dark band in the sky behind it that promised more snow to come. the others were up, and with them was chang. He was trembling, his tail was down; but he had caught the spirit that was in the men. he left them, instead of creeping at Derrick's heel, and in a moment he had found the blood. He scratched down to it, threw up his head, and bayed.
'that's better,' cried sullivan, and as Chang went out, away from the hollow, they followed him. 'we can cope with these beasts,' said sullivan, half to himself. they all felt that the peril could be faced and overcome now, and there were triumphant faces under the cold Moon: but when they turned the yaks' great Rock it was as if a great hammer has struck them all . There were no yaks.
there was one, 10 yards from the shelter; but it was dead, dismembered and mangled horribly. yet still, mainly in the drifting snow, there was the deep-plowed track of the rest. it was a path that forked, one branch going up the valley and a fainter one leading down towards the old valley and the glacier.
Olaf, from high up on a rock, shouted, 'Ay seen one, Cap'n, way down on the glacier.'
they leaped up after him, and there, far away and often obscured by the racing Shadows of the clouds, they saw the black shape of a fleeing yak just turning the corner right-handed down the old valley on the glacier.
'you and Li Han go down and catch it,' Cried Sullivan. 'don't go too far over the ice. look lively. We'll go up and find the rest.' "
Li han and olaf disappear. The rest are afraid they'll never see them again, but they cannot afford the time to go after them. they must get off the glacier before the winter comes on stronger.

Ross, Sullivan's partner, develops frostbite on his feet; they have turned black, so he struggles more and more to keep up with the rest.
P.247:
'Sullivan brought him into camp that night, but in the morning he was not there. there was his rifle, his ammunition, his meager rations for the next few days – there was no more after that – and on top of the neat pile a note for Sullivan. Sullivan had read it and had gone out. Derrick had thought that he was searching for ross, although a light fall of snow in the night would have made the search almost impossible, but he was not. He was sitting on a rock, out of sight of the others. he sat there for an hour, and then, with a face like death, he came back and slowly began arranging things for the morning's march. Derrick had questioned him: he had not replied. Derrick had repeated the question, and Sullivan had knocked him down: Derrick had not questioned him again.
they all of them understood the agonizing decision that Sullivan had made, and they respected it, for he alone knew what Ross had said in that last note that he had managed to scribble in the night.
but that was two long days ago and since then the weather had been bitterly cold."

They are brought to the lamasery by one of the red hat lamas. they are in big trouble now. These are not quiet, pious lamas; they are murderous, hating men. But they are helped by one of the lamas to escape.
P.262-3:
"but Derek hailed again, a long and extraordinarily loud ahoy that came flapping back from the farther side. He raced back past Sullivan and the professor, tearing down the slope. They stared after him in amazement.
he had seen what they had not, and his heart was almost bursting as it thumped with joy. when first he had seen the three yaks and the two walking men he had been coming down to report that the path was still clear: the sight that pulled him up: he had waited a minute to see the yaks and the men clear into sight round the corner before he ran down to make his report of their number and strength, and in that minute he had recognized a tall, lumbering form and one short, slight one with a black Chinese cap.
He sped on, tripped and took a frightful plunge down 50 yards of snow: he picked himself up unhurt and came to a steeper slope again. he squatted, edged on to the slope and slid the whole length of it, shrieking 'olaf, ahoy! Li Han. Ahoy There, ahoy.' he was halfway down the slope and moving at a terrifying Pace when he saw that there was a form on one of the yaks, a form that waved an arm. 'ahoy, Mr ross,' he bawled. Ahoy!' he went smack into a soft drift and plunged straight through it to the other side.
in another moment he was shaking hands, having the breath knocked out of his body by Olaf's huge slaps on the back, asking questions, answering them and at the same time hopping with delight.
there was nobody at the helicopter now. they were all racing down, and Sullivan was the first up after derrick. after a single, powerful handshake with Ross and a quick word with him, he said, 'olaf, here's all the ammunition left. You see that machine up there? There are five men coming down towards it. If they approach; one shot over their heads. If they come near, shoot to kill.' "

They get the abandoned Russian helicopter started (of course they do), Olaf driving, and make it to Samarcand. the end. Jolly adventure.



( )

A boy's adventure story, not a very good one -- preachy with a dénouement that taxes a modern reader's credulity. Still, it's O'Brian, so good in places. ( )

Good read; great adventure. Wonderful characterization. Worth the read. ( )

The Road to Samarcand - Patrick O'Brian *

Have only read one O’Brian novel before, [Master and Commander]. Fairly enjoyed that so starting reading the road to Samarcand after seeing it on sale in a bookshop.

I have to be honest and say that I could not finish the book, it was awful. Usually no matter how bad a book is I struggle through to the end, but after 5 nights and only 69 pages I eventually put it to one side.

The story is so full of annoying characters that I just couldn’t go on any longer. There is a scholarly absentminded professor, a hired help who says the work Ay every few words and Chinese cook who has a broad knowledge of the English language. He is the worst, with every sentence he speaks in a disjointed mixture of forced grammar.

I hated it…. Can’t say more than that. Think this will be my last book by the author.

As far as I could tell, the plot is set in around 1950’s china (although you wouldn’t think it with all the horseback fighting etc). Derrick visits his elderly cousin who is a professor of archaeology via his uncles sailing ship. The Chinese cook makes many references to ‘learned scholar’. They go to look at some remains of a building against the advice of locals etc, and get kidnapped…. Then I threw it away. ( )

In an event that laid scars on my dignity which still exist to this day, I was once embarassed mightily in front of the man who edited Patrick O'Brian at W.W. Norton books. He is also practically thier CEO or something-- I was not made quite clear on this point. At any rate, he came to my school to talka bout a book of his, and afterwards I went up and mentioned that I had read all the O'Brien books.

At this point, the head of the creative writing program told me that she founds this to be odd and strange, and everyone present agreed with her. "You are so peculiar," they all said. The editor himself agreed. "I can't stand those books, my self," she went on. "You are very odd!" Or something like that, I can't remember exactly. But the odd thing about me is I suppose that I am a rather young woman and that I read all of those books when I was in eighth grade. Which, given the usual market for O'Brian books, I admit is a little out of the ordinary-- but nothing to embarrass me in front of respectable old gentlemen for, goddammit!

Anyway, I read Hussein, all the Aubrey/Maturin books, and left it at that. Hussein is possibly my favourite. This book is of a very different style to both the Aubrey/Maturin novels or Hussein, which is more of a fable; this is a straight-up 1950s boys' adventure story. Something for twelve-year-olds, basically, but twelve-year-olds from the FIFTIES, which calculates up to something around today's sixeen-year-olds, grammar and vocabulary-wise. However, it's written in a style and with a childish declarativeness that no sixteen-year-old American boy could enjoy unless they are a rather forgiving and voracious reader. The boy in the book, Derrick, has a loyal dog, a sea-captain uncle, is an orphan, has a loonily lovable Oxford-type professor-cousin, travels about with a pack of adventuresome pals from a variety of national backgrounds, gets to shoot guns, gets to ride in a tank, gets to ride in a helicopter, gets to defeat Russian spies-- in other words, he gets to do everything any twelve-year-old could possibly want, thus making this the archetypical boy-story of all time.

Nowhere near the quality of the Aubrey/Maturin books, or of Hussein, which I consider a masterpiece of storytelling-- but good enough. But the way this book was marketed is a little odd-- it's got a sober, adult cover, has nothing on it at all to suggest it to children, would scarcely serve to entertain today's children anyway (the vocabulary would be tough for a kid young enough to appreciate the storyline), and has some dull, plot-revealing blurb copy on the back. Bah. Obviously, the only people who can be relied upon to buy this book are the O'Brian nuts, the middle-aged men who read his books when they were coming out all last century. It's marketed to them. I hope they'll enjoy it. It's a jolly little tale. ( )