"The historical fiction-reading public is divided into two groups," declared Booklist critic Brad Hooper. "Those who love Patrick O'Brian already and those who stand to fall in love with him once they've read him." O'Brian, who died in early 2000, enjoyed international recognition late in his life as the author of dozens of historical novels and translations. Although his first book of fiction was published in 1950, it wasn't until the appearance of his 1969 Master and Commander, the initial installment in his twenty-volume series featuring British naval officer Jack Aubrey and physician cum spy Stephen Maturin, set during the time of the Napoleonic Wars between England and France, that he endeared readers around the world. His later works, including The Wine-Dark Sea, The Commodore, Yellow Admiral, The Hundred Days, and Blue at the Mizzen, the final novel in the "Aubrey-Maturin" saga, earned O'Brian an avid following in the United States...