SOURCE: “Vivid Adventures of Two Friends,” in Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 86, December 31, 1993, p. 11.

In the following review, Pratter offers a positive assessment of The Wine-Dark Sea, calling the novel a good introduction into the world of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.

The Wine-Dark Sea is a perfect sampler of O'Brian's distinctive style. It begins with a chase across the South Seas from New South Wales to Peru, a chase interrupted by a submarine volcanic eruption—the portent of which is the lurid orange of the sky and the deep purplish tinge of the swell. The novel ends as vividly among the blue ice mountains of the Antarctic seas south of Cape Horn. In between, there are sea-fights, a South American revolution, dead calms, and hurricane gales.

But the focus of this volume, as in the preceding ones of this notable series, is the friendship of Captain Jack Aubrey...