Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, veterans of many battles, return in this novel to the seas where they first sailed as shipmates. But Jack is now a senior Captain commanding a line-of-battle ship sent out to reinforce the squadron blockading Toulon, and this is a longer, harder, colder war than the dashing frigate actions of his early days.

A sudden turn of events takes him and Stephen off on a hazardous mission to the Greek Islands. All his old skills of seamanship and his proverbial luck when fighting against odds come triumphantly into their own.

“Everything that is said of the amazing Dr Maturin – ‘Such a range of inquiry, such erudition, such illuminating comparisons, such flashes of wit!' – also applies to Patrick O'Brian.”
T.J. BINYON, 'Times Literary Supplement'