"O'Brian is at the top of his elegant form here…This is splendid storytelling from a true master."

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"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 - Boston Globe

"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 - New York Times

"Aubrey and Maturin are the most enjoyable literary companions since Holmes and Watson."

Detroit Free Press

"Taken as a whole, the Aubrey/Maturin novels are by a long shot the best things of their kind, so much better than the competition that comparisons long ago ceased to be relevant: they are uniquely excellent."

New York Times Book Review

"O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century."

George Will

"Gripping and vivid… a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit."

A. S. Byatt

"I fell in love with his writing straightaway, at first with Master and Commander. It wasn’t primarily the Nelson and Napoleonic period, more the human relationships. …And of course having characters isolated in the middle of the goddamn sea gives more scope. …It’s about friendship, camaraderie. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin always remind me a bit of Mick and me."

Keith Richards

"There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his."

Stephen Becker - Chicago Sun-Times

"[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 - New York Times

"Patrick O’Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars."

James Hamilton-Paterson - New Republic

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

Ken Ringle - Washington Post

"The experience of reading O'Brian is that of gracious acceptance at one of the banquets of life's feast…It's hard not to find him irresistible."

Commonweal

"If there were 17 more novels, I'd start today."

Donald Graham - Wall Street Journal

"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 - New York Times Book Review

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

Christopher Hitchens - Slate