This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ships surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelsons navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.


Earphones Awards recipient Simon Vance was born in England and worked for the BBC for ten years as a radio news announcer and as a narrator for the Royal National Institute for the Blind in London. Besides narrating audiobooks, he is involved in numerous stage-acting projects in the United States and Europe.