The Nutmeg of Consolation

We join Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, captain in the Royal Navy and surgeon/intelligence agent respectively, where we left them at the end of The Thirteen Gun Salute: shipwrecked on a remote Dutch East Indies island.

Employing great enterprise, Aubrey secures a new ship and sails for Australia. A penal colony by charter, in fact a grim outpost of legalized slavery, conditions there exacerbate Maturin's Irish temper and nearly provoke a diplomatic crisis. And an excursion into the bush ends in a close encounter of the final kind.©1991 Patrick O'Brian; (P)2001 Random House, Inc.; Random House AudioBooks, a Division of Random House, Inc.

love O'Brian. not a great reader.

I struggled with the reader of this story. I believe they have not a grasp of the characters. making Aubrey a casual pompous ass, and Maturin a bit whiny and old. I was hankering for a familiar tale.....I did get that much.