Treason's Harbour: Aubrey/Maturin Series, Book 9

Wonderful story, great continuing characters. Patrick Tull's narration is the best I've heard on any audio book. Start with the first book in this 21 book series and you'll be hooked. It helps to see the movie, Master and Commander, but that script was taken from several books and it omits the important Maturin espionage part of the plots throughout.

Finally, an accent (Italian woman), that Patrick Tull cannot do with perfection.

The book is a typical M&C - Jack is sailing around doing Jack things, while the Doctor is up to his capers and collecting organisms.

If you've ever wondered how they can do all that swimming in the ocean and never get attacked by sharks, you're questions are answered in this book. And it's particularly gruesome.....

Very enjoyable listen. The end looked tedious, but was a very big surprise, including the death of a long time character.

This book had more with Maturin as a spy as well as the ship's physician. Loved the descriptions of Malta and I followed on the map the land travel across the Suez to the Red Sea. Patrick Tull is a great narrator. Can not wait to listen to book 10.

I love all of the Aubrey/Maturin Series but this books storyline was surprising and has added more of a desire for the next books in the series.

Maturin plays a rather large role in this book as he does in many of the others, but his relationship with Mrs. Fielding adds to the story greatly.

His voice is very authentic. It varies with each different character and provides excellent contrast during conversational periods in the book so much so that the imagination can picture each character and understand who is speaking before they are identified by the text. Also, the way he reads it feels more like a story is being told conversationally, rather than like you are being read a story.
Other reviews have noted discomfort with some of the swallowing sounds that can be heard by the Mr. Tull, but these seems to be very much in context with the characters doing the speaking.

If you have read or been listening from book 1 through book 8, book 9 will not disappoint.

I enjoyed the book and yes after a year or so I might listen to it again

It showed you can never really trust anyone who has serious vices like gambling they are easy turned to the other side

I liked both Jack and Steven they make the whole story stick together

I enjoyed Jack saving the dog that was a true light on his character

Wished I would find out what happens to the traitor

I had worried about a series so long, glad to find the middle still entertains and pleases! I'd reccomend it to anyone with any interest in the sea or period history... quite good!

Similar to the last book in style of course, but they also both end abruptly with tense sailing action! Another good one in the series!

Killick is always my favorite in all the books... his grumbling always makes me laugh!

much tho I'd be tempted to say Jack or Steven, tho he might get tedious, I'd probably most enjoy dinner and drinks with the midshipmen... it would be neat to see them outside of their forced formality with members of rank and I bet they'd tell the best stories!

Glad to see this one get back more to the sea side of things... it got bogged down there for a while with ladies, laws, and finances while all my favorite parts are at sea. Glad to read this one as more of a return to the more adventurous and discovering aspects... with some heated battles to get your blood pumping! Much Better By Me!

...characters you'll know like friends. An immersive atmosphere, enough action to engage, but not a surfeit of it. And, best of all, the right narrator. Patrick Tull was made for this work, and when he's reading it, the happiest words in the English language are:

"Chapter One..."

I had listened to, or read, the Jack Aubry series narrated by Simon Vance until Treason's Harbor. To my Horror, I found myself not listening to Vance, but to the Always Rasping, Often Slurping, Patrick Tull, who destroys the otherwise wonderful book. Often Tull will not change, or at least not seem to change, tone for different characters. Certainly his attempt at different genders is not just weak, but somewhat sickening as all women sound like crones with a 3 pack/day smoking habit.

Why all the Audible versions of the series are available only with Tull as narrator, yet CD versions are available with Vance is somewhat mysterious, but it is a cheap substitute to be sure. I will write Audible to see what can be done about this scandal, but even then someone needs to be flogged.

This reader, Patrick Tull, is so concerned with 'authentic' accents that the listener is denied access to O'Brien's delicious syntax. For example, the is nothing in O'Brien's description of Maturin's Catalan-Irish ancestry to indicate that he speaks with a strong Irish brogue. Quite the contrary, Aubrey, in the first book, is not aware that Maturin is Catholic: an Irish brogue would have made Protestantism doubtful.
The reader Simon Vance, on the other hand, read's O'Brien as written, with excellent cadence and rhythm befitting the characters' personality and heritage as suggested in the wonderful text.