"The best historical novels ever written..."
--The New York Times Book Review

"It has been said that this series is some of the finest historical fiction of our time . . .Aubrey and Maturin have been described as better than Holmes and Watson,the equal of Quixote and Panza . . . All this is true. And the marvel is, it hardly says enough."
- The Los Angeles Times

"What Mr. O'Brian has created is no less than a tapestry of English life in the early 19th century that is almost Dickensian in its scope. Wrought from contemporary letters and logs and memoirs and official records, Mr. O'Brian's language is elegant, erudite and dense, exposing the reader to a world both high and low, encompassing honor and tyranny, pederasty and heterosexual love and betrayal, loyalty and treason, drug addiction and debtor's gaol, fiasco and triumph, cowardice and courage."
- John Gregory Dunne, New York Observer

"You are going to love the erudition, the humor, the authenticity and the sheer joy of every hour you can steal away alone with these books. If you like the sea, you'll love Patrick O'Brian!"
-- Bill Purdin, legendinc.com