“If Jane Austen had written rousing sea yarns, she would have produced something very close to the prose of Patrick O'Brian.” — Time

Praise for the Aubrey/Maturin Series and Patrick O’Brian

“The best historical novels ever written.”
—Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review

“I love these books.… [They offer] the same sense of lived experience as Hilary Mantel.… They will sweep you away and return you delighted, increased and stunned. If the phrase ‘Napoleonic war fiction’ fills you with anticipation, then you don’t need me to convince you to read [Patrick] O’Brian. But for the rest of you.… [P]lease, just trust me.”
—Nicola Griffith, NPR

“A few books work their way… onto [bestseller] lists by genuine, lasting excellence—witness The Lord of the Rings, or Patrick O’Brian’s sea stories.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin

“Like John LeCarré, [O’Brian] has erased the boundary separating a debased genre from ‘serious’ fiction. O’Brian is a novelist, pure and simple, one of the best we have.”
—Mark Horowitz, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“[Patrick O’Brian has] the power of bringing near to the reader… savagery and tenderness, beauty and mystery and boldness and dignity.”
—Eudora Welty

“O’Brian’s eloquent admirers include not merely distinguished critics and reviewers but… thousands upon thousands of fervent readers who thank the gods for him.… [H]is work accomplishes nobly the three grand purposes of art: to entertain, to edify, and to awe.”
—Stephen Becker, Paris Review

“For escapist reading, I especially like the sea novels of Patrick O’Brian.”
—Bill Bryson

“O’Brian’s narrative… provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises—comic, grim, farcical and tragic. An essential of the truly gripping book for the narrative addict is the creation of a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit, and O’Brian does this with prodigal specificity and generosity.”
—A. S. Byatt

“I prefer the Aubrey-Maturin series to all others.… Every book is packed to absolute straining with erudition, wit, history, and thunderous action.”
—Joe Hill

“All of the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian [is on my shelves].”
—Mindy Kaling, New York Times

It’s 1802. The Treaty of Amiens has brought an end to the hostilities between Great Britain and France. Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend, naval surgeon Stephen Maturin, are enjoying the respite in the English countryside, besotted with two beautiful cousins, Sophie Williams and Diana Villiers—until Aubrey loses his fortune and they flee to France to escape his creditors. While in France, Napoleon smashes the Peace of Amiens and war begins anew. Aubrey and Maturin, now finding themselves behind enemy lines, make their way back to England. Maturin is sent to Spain on an intelligence-gathering mission and the now-solvent Aubrey assumes command of a strange warship, pursuing his quarry straight into the mouth of a French-held harbor. Amidst the rollicking adventures at sea and mishaps on land, Aubrey and Maturin’s friendship is tested by their romantic entanglements with the cousins in this brilliant second installment of the epic series.