Can Captain Jack Aubrey and his crew defy the odds, and outmanoeuvre the French, to take two small but vital islands in the Indian Ocean?
Captain Jack Aubrey is ashore on half-pay without a command – until his friend, and occasional intelligence agent, Stephen Maturin, arrives with secret orders for Aubrey to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope, under a Commodore’s pennant. The sea calls to him.
Aubrey soon finds himself in command of a frigate and setting sail for the Cape of Good Hope. But the difficulties of carrying out his orders are compounded by two of his own captains – Lord Clonfert, a pleasure-seeking dilettante, and Captain Corbett, whose severity can push his crews to the verge of mutiny. Based on the actual campaign of 1810 in the Indian Ocean, O’Brian’s attention to detail of eighteenth-century life ashore and at sea is meticulous. This tale is as beautifully written and as gripping as any in the series; it also stands on its own as a superlative work of fiction.
‘A few books work their way . . . onto [bestseller] lists by genuine, lasting excellence – witness . . . Patrick O’Brian’s sea stories’ Ursula K. Le Guin
O’Brian’s World
O’Brian’s mastery of language is most wonderful of all. He manages to capture that mixture of toughness and grace which, for me at least, makes formal eighteenth-century English so attractive....
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