I didn't find it difficult because of the language - I guess you get used to it, and yeah, have waded through Tom Jones with no problem - but the politics of it pissed me off so much I couldn't really appreciate the whole Age of Sailness of it. Jack Aubrey is conservative with a small and a big C, but Marryat is somewhere way over to the right of him *shrugs* We just don't get along.