"Publishers Weekly" notes that "the prose moves between the maritime sublime and the Austenish bon mot, "a man generally disliked is hardly apt to lavish good food and wine on those who despise him, and Ward's dinners were execrable"." They enjoy O'Brian's staying power as a writer; "O'Brian continues to unroll a splendid Turkish rug of a saga, and if it seems unlikely that the sedentary Stephen would hunt lions in the Atlas mountains (with the Dey of Algiers!), O'Brian brings off even this narrative feat with aplomb."