Literary Significance and Criticism
Desolation Island marks a turning point in the Aubrey/Maturin novels. Whereas the previous four novels had featured self-contained plots (O'Brian wrote Master and Commander as a stand-alone novel, and the following three titles merely acted as sequels whose story arcs integrated only loosely with any of the other novels in the saga), in Desolation Island, O'Brian now begins an arc that will continue through the entirety of Fortune of War before concluding in The Surgeon's Mate. Some of the events set in motion in this arc will return to haunt Jack and Stephen as late as The Yellow Admiral, the eighteenth novel in the series.
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