[1] The author's ability to put the reader in an era about 200 years ago was judged to be impressive and engrossing, "contemporary novels, written, paradoxically, in an 18th-Century voice",[2] also that O'Brian created "a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit.

[2] Aubrey and his crew are shipwrecked on a remote island in the South China Sea after surviving the destruction of HMS Diane in a typhoon.

A cricket match is underway between the sailors and marines, which keeps up the crew's spirits as they build the schooner needed for reaching Batavia.

Speaking in Malay with Maturin, the Dyaks promise to take a message to Batavia in exchange for a note on Shao Yen for twenty "joes" (Portuguese Johannes coins), but instead return in a proa with 300 pirates, twice as many as the 150 Dianes.

On the last day of rum and tobacco supplies, Maturin meets four Chinese children collecting precious birds' nests from the surrounding cliffs.

Maturin persuades the children's father, Li Po, to carry the remaining crew of the Diane in the empty holds of his roomy junk back to Batavia.

Aubrey attempts to outwit the Cornélie in the Salibabu Passage but is outmanoeuvred and nearly outgunned until, at the height of the chase, Nutmeg encounters the Surprise, under Thomas Pullings, accompanied by the Triton, a British privateer.

Stopping to collect fresh foods at Sweetings Island, Maturin rescues two young Melanesian girls, the sole survivors of an outbreak of smallpox.

Sailing into Sydney Cove, Aubrey, Maturin and Martin are shocked at life in the penal colony under Governor Macquarie, no better than it was after the "Rum Rebellion".

Maturin and Tom Pullings attend a formal dinner, hosted by Mrs Macquarie and the Governor's deputy, Colonel McPherson, at Government House.

On a second trip, they stay with Paulton north of Sydney near Bird Island, and find Padeen in better shape, assigned to work there as Maturin had arranged.

Maturin hears from Hastings of the recently arrived Waverley that his wife Diana had a daughter in April, and he is overjoyed, but tells no one else his good news.

[1] It was described as "Another in O'Brian's stylish epic series" and the bemused doctor was "as always, the tale's most interesting character and constantly preoccupied with flora, fauna, and good conversation".

"[5] Library Journal found the main characters very well drawn, and noted the quality of the writing in the description of flora and fauna seen in the series of adventures in this novel.

"An essential of the truly gripping book for the narrative addict is the creation of a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit, and O'Brian does with prodigal specificity and generosity.

In England, after all, 19th-Century naval fiction--from the classic Horatio Hornblower stories by C. S. Forester to the waterlogged tales of Dudley Pope--is a tried and true, not to say tired, genre with limited appeal.

(Once, Maturin even comes perilously close to discovering the subconscious a century in advance of Freud; another time, contemplating a peculiar animal specimen, he speculates on the origins of species and their evolution, but can't quite work out the details.

"[2]In his Author's Note, O'Brian makes reference to Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore, a book that provided him with invaluable research information about the history of Australia and, in particular, the penal colony of New South Wales.

This story begins where The Thirteen Gun Salute ended, on the island with HMS Diane broken by the typhoon, building a new ship from what they can salvage.

It makes reference to the last time that Aubrey and Maturin approached Botany Bay in The Fortune of War, after the situation with Captain William Bligh and the Rum Rebellion has been addressed.