Desolation Island is the fifth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series, and a wonderful nautical fiction book. It is a suspenseful and somewhat grim book. O’Brian apparently 
The book starts with Captain Jack Aubrey on shore. He is now a rich man, but believing in others’ honesty and being naïve in all matters apart from life at sea, he gets into all sorts of trouble. He is cheated by horse traders and card sharks, and even buys into a silver mining fraud. His particular friend Stephen Maturin is in trouble too – he has been suddenly abandoned by the love of his life, Diana Villiers.
So when Jack Aubrey is offered the command of HMS Leopard, a rebuilt fourth-rate ship, he says yes, partly because he thinks his friend Steven needs to get away, partly because even his own wife sees that the person in need of getting away is none other than Jack Aubrey himself.
HMS Leopard is to cruise the East Indies. However, as the government must send an important prisoner to Botany Bay, Leopard is modified to carry convicts.
Much of the book is concerned with a naval chase in perilous seas where, for once, Jack Aubrey is forced to flee from the enemy and is unable to outsmart him. HMS Leopard is pursued all the way into Antarctic waters by a superior Dutch man-of-war, Waakzaamheid.
In addition we follow Aubrey and Maturing in a storm in the Bay of Biscay, through an epidemic of gaol fever that decimates the crew, the striking an iceberg as Leopard tries to replenish its water supply, followed by a desperate and seemingly loosing struggle to stay afloat, and the grounding of the ship at Desolation Island.
Desolation Island is one of the richest but also one of the most easily approached titles in the Aubrey Maturin series. It is exciting, entertaining, a little bit tragic, as well as very well written. One of the best in the series, in my opinion!
Praise:
Good history, fascinating erudition, espionage, romance, fever in the hold, a wreck in lost latitudes, and an action at sea that for sheer descriptive power can match anything in sea-fiction. — Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian
, 
, and 
.
