Desolation Island (Aubrey Maturin Series) (Paperback)

by Patrick O'Brian (Author) "The breakfast-parlour was the most cheerful room in Ashgrove Cottage, and although the builders had ruined the garden with heaps of sand and unslaked lime..." (more)
Key Phrases: prime seamen, larboard beam, forenoon watch, Captain Aubrey, Sir Joseph, Captain Moore (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Captain Bligh (yes, the guy from the Bounty) needs to be rescued, and the Royal Navy has the perfect man for the job: Captain Jack Aubrey. With his friend and cloak-and-dagger expert Stephen Maturin in tow, Aubrey sets off for Australia. Several factors, including an attractive spy and a small-scale epidemic, conspire to change his plans, and before long his frigate is being pursued into Antarctic waters by a Dutch man-of-war. Five installments into the series, the Aubrey-Maturin story remains (to quote The Observer) "the best thing afloat since Horatio Hornblower."

Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian
Good history, fascinating erudition, espionage, romance, fever in the hold, a wreck in lost latitudes, and an action at sea that for sheer descriptive power can match anything in sea-fiction.

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