Description
The brand new novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series: a classic naval adventure, crammed with incident, superbly plotted and utterly gripping. “You are in for the treat of your lives. Thank God for Patrick O’Brian” Irish TimesWith the Napoleonic wars looking all but over, Jack Aubrey was already on his way across the Atlantic to try his fortunes under the flag of the young Chilean republic when Napoleon escaped from Elba. Hurriedly appointed to command a squadron flying the broad pennant of a Commodore, Jack was made flag officer in all but name, to operate within and without the Mediterranean on a number of difficult and dangerous missions in an atmosphere of confused political allegiances and with whatever ships could be scraped together at a moment’s notice.Conspiracy in the Adriatic, in the Berber and Arab lands of the southern shore of the Mediterranean, night actions, fierce pursuits and the natural wonders of a still uncolonised North Africa all exert their pull on Jack, now ageing – wheezing indeed as he hauls himself aloft – and his old friend Stephen Maturin in this the nineteenth novel in a series that has, like the service it depicts, carried all before it.The latest Aubrey-Maturin novel brings alive the sights and sounds of North Africa as well as the great naval battles in the days immediately following Napoleon’s escape from Elba.’Patrick O’Brian is far and away the best of the Napoleonic storytellers. The Hundred Days is one of the best of the series: a classic naval adventure, crammed with incident, superbly plotted and utterly gripping….Fans of O’Brian will need no introduction to Jack Aubrey, one of the most attractive heroes of all literature, on splendid form in The Hundred Days. “Have you ever noticed,’ he asks Maturin as they gaze on Cape San Giorgio, ‘how foreigners can never get English names quite right?” “Poor souls,” mutters Maturin, most beguiling of O’Brian’s characters…This is O’Brian at his brilliant, entertaining best and when he is on this form the rest of us who write of the Napoleonic conflict might as well give up and try a new career. Fans of the series will need no encouragement to buy this book, but if you are new to Aubrey and Maturin then this is as splendid an introduction as you could wish for.’ BERNARD CORNWELL.