The Wine-Dark Sea: 16 (Aubrey Maturin Series) - Softcover

Addictively readable.

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

They're funny, they're exciting, they're informative. . . there are legions of us who gladly ship out time and time again under Captain Aubrey.

There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his.--Stephen Becker

I haven't read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O'Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn't stop.--E. O. Wilson

The best historical novels ever written... On every page Mr. O'Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don't, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives.--Richard Snow

It has been something of a shock to find myself--an inveterate reader of girl books--obsessed with Patrick O'Brian's Napoleonic-era historical novels... What keeps me hooked are the evolving relationships between Jack and Stephen and the women they love.--Tamar Lewin

I devoured Patrick O'Brian's 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog.--Christopher Hitchens

[O'Brian's] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today's putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade.--David Mamet

The Aubrey-Maturin series... far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart.--Ken Ringle

Two privateers pursue a prize through the Great South Sea, confronting the dangers of the ocean and their own private demons as they suddenly find themselves hunted in a chase south of Cape Horn