this is a novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series, which just gets better and better. I am trying *so hard* not to read them all in a row, as I can only read them for the first time once, and I will have the rest of my life to reread them in a row if I wish (and I bet I could do that forever). I'm trying to make the excitable tension of wondering what comes next last as long as possible, and O'Brian never fails me.