The Wine-Dark Sea (Paperback, Reissue)

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 in order to relieve 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 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 and bloody actions make the reader grateful that he is watching from a distance.

'If O'Brian's novels have become a cult, this is because they are truly addictive. They are, quite magnificently, adventure yarns whose superb authenticity never distracts from the sheer thrill of the action. What brings the research to life is O'Brian's vivid evocation of the individual atmosphere aboard each different ship – the inner weather, as it were, of a floating world dependent on the literal wind and waves.'
Caroline Moore, 'Sunday Telegraph'