The review of this part-novel can easily be as short as the fragment itself: Patrick O'Brian began work on another installment in the Aubrey/Maturin series but, alas, did not live to finish.

Since the text at hand is an unfinished work, it is pointless to review it – the plot only just begins to unfold when the text is already finished. The book contains both a version in regular printing type and a facsimile version of his original handscript. The latter contains a few extra pages which, unfortunately, are of little use to the average reader since O'Brian's handwriting is almost completely illegible.

Whoever likes to dive into the maritime life of the 1900s navy will ceratinly enjoy even this little extra helping from one of the greatest writers in naval fiction. Whoever is in search for a proper novel with a proper plot, development of characters and the action, will not find that this text constitutes a novel at all.