At the outset of this adventure filled with disaster and delight, Jack
Aubrey and Stephen Maturin pursue a heavy American privateer through the
Great South Sea. The strange color of the ocean water reminds Stephen of
Homer's famous description, but it also portends a spectacular submarine
volcanic eruption that will create a new island overnight and leave an
indelible impression on the reader's imagination. Their ship, the
Surprise, is now also a privateer, the better to escape diplomatic
complications from Stephen's mission, which is to ignite the
revolutionary tinder of South America. Jack will survive a desperate
open-boat journey and come face to face with his illegitimate black son;
Stephen, caught up in the aftermath of his failed coup, will flee for
his life into the high, frozen wastes of the Andes; and Patrick
O'Brian's brilliantly detailed narrative will reunite them at last in a
breathtaking chase through storm seas and icebergs south of Cape Horn,
where the hunters suddenly become the hunted. This is storytelling
without models or equals in recent literature; critics have noted in
O'Brian's great Aubrey/Maturin epic, now sixteen volumes in length,
haunting echoes of such writers as Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, and
Jane Austen. Some readers will respond to the undeniable excitement of
the chases, storms, and battles, others to the precision of language, or
the humor, or the wealth of erudition in Maturin's researches and
conversations. But the truest mark of O'Brian's stature as a novelist
may be the great number of readers who find fresh delights and deeper
resonances in rereading his novels.
