At the opening of a voyage filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are in pursuit of a privateer sailing under American colours through the Great South Sea. Stephen's objective is to set the revolutionary tinder of South America ablaze to relieve the pressure on the British government which, already engaged in a death-struggle with a Europe dominated by Napoleon, has blundered into war with the young and uncomfortably vigorous United States. The shock and barbarity of the hand-to-hand fighting are sharpened by O'Brian's exact sense of period, his eye for landscape and his feel for a ship under sail. His thrilling descriptions of hair-raising bloody actions make the listener grateful that he is watching from a distance.

'Hardy's rough and tumble salty sea-dog tone is perfect.'
EVENING STANDARD

Reviews

‘[O’Brian] has shown us that in our literary silver age, authentic gold can still be mined… He is a man whose books you would dare to give to Sterne; whose conversation would have delighted Coleridge. It is his misfortune, but our great good luck, that he is our contemporary and not theirs.’
William Waldegrave, The Times

‘To read Patrick O’Brian is to turn the pages of literary history. His series of novels comprises the most significant extended story since Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time.’
Alan Judd, Sunday Times