"O'Brian is not that hard a taste to acquire, but he is very tough to shake....
[The Aubrey-Maturin series] is a great work."--Boston Globe

"[O'Brian is] better than anybody at historical fiction...as able and graceful with the English
language as a writer can be."--Denver Post

"The book contains the usual splendid blend of nautical detail and political intrigue, savage
battles and naturalists' musing, all ratified by O'Brian's seemingly effortless ability to deploy
the vocabulary and idioms of the time."--New Yorker

"This is a work of genius, and in the face of its inevitable end, I can only think with pleasure
at the now 20 volumes on my shelf."--J. W. Foster, BookPage

Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, but the ensuing peace becomes ugly for Captain
Jack Aubrey, with violent celebrations of the English sailors in Gibraltar and the desertion of
nearly half his crew. To cap it all off, the Surprise is nearly sunk in a shattering night
collision on the first leg of her journey to South America, where Jack and Stephen are to help
Chile assert her independence from Spain.

The delay for repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences, and then the South American
expedition is a desperate affair, starting with near disaster in the ice-choked seas far south of
the Horn. In the end, Jack, again the daring frigate commander of old, stakes all on a desperate
solo night raid against the might of the Spanish viceroy in Peru.