The Road to Samarcand

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The Road to Samarcand is a novel by English author Patrick O'Brian, published in 1954 and set in Asia during the 1930s. Derrick, an American teen, is brought to China with his missionary parents, then orphaned. He goes to sea with his uncle Captain Sullivan and Ross, the Captain's friend, starting out on the South China Sea. They are the core of a group who has adventures on the road to Samarcand, using skills as required by the challenges of the journey, often for the first time in their lives. They begin on the oldest ways of transportation and end on the newest.
One reviewer in 2007 writes about the novel: "Six decades later, O'Brian's richly told adventure saga, with its muscular prose, supple dialogue and engaging characters, packs a nice old-school punch." The Road to Samarcand precedes by 15 years the first novel of the Aubrey-Maturin series, the canon which brought O'Brian fame, and bears a relationship to its development.