Anthony Bailey, writing in "The New York Times", finds that this novel puts the reader "on board the "Surprise" in the South Pacific in the early 19th century amid a swirl of nautical detail, unalloyed, unapologetic and absolutely right." in a novel written by "one of the best storytellers afloat". He suggests that with his first novel in this series, O'Brian may have been competing with C. S. Forester, but "At this point, he is in a different squadron altogether, providing pleasure for those who will never be able to read a new Captain Marryat (the author, in the 1830s and 1840s, of a number of sea adventures) – but in this instance a Marryat with a touch of Jane Austen, Erskine Childers and John le Carré thrown in." The relationship between the principal characters is "One of the delights of these books", where "Aubrey is a sailor in his blood and bones" and Maturin "remains a landlubber the non-seafaring reader can identify with." Bailey notes the use of letters home, a device used also by William Golding in his sea-faring trilogy "To the Ends of the Earth", and finds that "O'Brian while telling his yarn writes like a man simply at home in a 500-ton frigate. All the naval minutiae of the early 19th century are evidently in his grasp, but like the "Surprise's" maintopsails, they are used to drive the book forward, a great show that also has cumulative effect." Bailey highlights many aspects of the plot, which issues are addressed by Aubrey, and which are handled by Maturin, and notes that in this novel, the officers have a particularly varied diet, including "a suicidal swordfish, soused pig's face and a Polynesian stew in which a human ear floats."