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Treason's Harbour
Treason's Harbour
Treason's Harbour
Audiobook12 hours

Treason's Harbour

Written by Patrick O'Brian

Narrated by Patrick Tull

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

The espionage activities of cunning ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin have kept him at odds with the most important French agent in the Mediterranean, Lesueur-a man with a long memory and a taste for revenge. When that revenge takes the shape of the delicate and distracting Mrs. Fielding, who also attracts the ever-wandering eye of Jack Aubrey, Stephen's sensibilities are severely tested.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 11, 2008
ISBN9781501992667
Treason's Harbour
Author

Patrick O'Brian

Patrick O’Brian (1914-2000), born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist, biographer and translator from French. His translations include Henri Charrière’s Papillon, Jean Lacouture’s biography of Charles de Gaulle and many of Simone de Beauvoir’s later works, including Les Belles Images, All Said and Done and A Very Easy Death.

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Reviews for Treason's Harbour

Rating: 4.2117989632495165 out of 5 stars
4/5

517 ratings28 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Through Crickwing's journey, readers will know what it's like to be a cockroach on the forest floor. Crickwing is both prey and predator in this book, but he learns to be merciful and kind through the acts of insects even smaller than he is.Reading this book will naturally prompt discussion on the ecosystem and animals in the forest.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Beautiful pictures of insects, used to tell a dull story about bullying and cooperation.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Good book with great pictures about a cricket that didn't fit in helping out a group of ants and helping them out. These ants excepted him and took them in.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Escaping from the hunger of a toad, Crickwing the cockroach sets himself apart from his fellow insects, who tease him about his handicap. His nightly searches for food leave him hungry, as he allows too much time creating sculptures of the bits he finds, which are swiped away from larger creatures who happen upon his intense concentration. Frustrated, hungry and in pain, he takes his situation out on a colony of leaf-cutting ants with bullying antics. But the table turns and they, en masse, tether him up as a sacrifice to the army ants. A change of heart for all leaves us with a cheery lesson on acceptance. Beautiful and fun illustrations make this a delight.(I believe even Kafka would be pleased!)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I would use this book to model using transitions in writing. I think students will like this book because it is about a cockroach who gets picked on, becomes a bully, then helps save the ants he was bullying from other ants that are bullying them.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Each page in this bug book describes an insect. The descriptions are given in different patterns. Fun facts and colorful pictures.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautiful illustrations with a warm story about another unlikely lovable insect--the cockroach. The illustrations on works of art and the story is well written and just as handsome.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The main character Crickwing is constantly trying to do his own artwork without interruptions. However, he is constantly bullied or interrupted by larger insects. He then decides to be a bully himself. However, he soon realizes he messed with the wrong insects and eventually helps them in return. A great story that demonstrates how bullying can be very hurtful.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Crickwing is as artist who dislikes his nickname causing him to hunt alone in the darkest part of the night. He also loves to play with his food, well not play but sculpt. This cockroach is an artist, but others begin to bully him and destroy his artwork. In his frustration he begins to bully the leave cutter ants who turn to their Queen for help. Crickwing becomes the annual sacrifice to the army ants, but instead of a sacrifice Crickwing has a plan to help the leave cutters solve their army ant problem. Well illustrated book. Great example of bullying to share with children. This story could be read to a class and then students could write and illustrate their own story about insects or bullies. Then these stories could be shared with the class.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Only Cannon could create an adorable character in the form of a cockroach.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Comparatively slight, this story of a cockroach with a broken wing and a flair for food preparation is heartwarming and sweet. Cannon explores the nature of bullying in a particularly subtle way, and ties it all up with a multi-species bow at the end. Doesn't stand up to her earlier work, in my opinion, though the illustrations are delightful.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Crickwing is about a lonely cockroach who keeps away from all the other animals because they either want to eat him, or make fun of him because of his crooked wing. Angry over this mistreatment, Crickwing takes out his aggression on a hardworking colony of leaf cutter ants. As retrebution, the queen demands that Crickwing be tied up and offered as a tribute to the army ants. Taking pity on Crickwing, a few of the leaf cutter ants set Crickwing free. Feeling grateful, Crickwing helps the ants build a giant ant-eater to scare away the angry army ants so that they will not invade the leaf cutters' colony. The queen invited Crickwing to live with then in their colony, Crickwing agrees, and they all live happily ever after. yay!I really enjoyed this book. I thought the story was unique and the illustrations were beautiful. I would use this book to teach my class about treating people kindly, even when they are not kind to you. I might even use this book to introduce the tropical rainforest biome etc.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Substance: How a disabled cockroach helps a benign ant colony save itself from the army ants.Style: Well-told and beautiful illustrations, and not too PC.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Another great book in this series. Very addictive. I like the friendship between Jack and the doctor and the spy activities, etc.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Book 9 in Patrick O'Brian's series of sea stories featuring Captain Jack Aubrey and ship's doctor and part-time spy Stephen Maturin. In this one, they go after a potentially incredibly valuable prize and deal with some issues of compromised intelligence.You know, it sometimes occurs to me to think that either O'Brian knows nothing about pacing or just does not care, and this volume is very much a case in point. Rambling conversations about nothing relevant go on for pages while dramatic moments where plot-critical things are happening are sometimes passed over very quickly. And yet somehow, at his best, he makes that work for him. And as far as I'm concerned, it definitely worked for him here. This was kind of slow, and not all that exciting, but doggone it, I found it just terribly pleasant, somehow, as I sat there reading it in my living room on a series of lovely spring days, imagining the desert breeze wafting in through my windows might at any moment start bringing me the scent of the ocean and feeling content with my life of not being shot at by the French.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A bit of a curate's egg in that whilst it had the excellent characterisation, the realism, the evocative prose of all Aubrey/Maturin novels not a lot happened. The overall story of Aubrey and Maturin did not progress very much. But then I would guess it was often like that.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Treason’s Harbour, Patrick O’Brian’s ninth book in his Aubrey-Maturin series, sees picks up shortly after the events of The Ionian Mission, with Captain Jack Aubrey refitting the HMS Surprise at Malta and Dr. Stephen Maturin working to maintain his cover as an intelligence agent amid a shake-up in the Mediterranean command and a Malta teeming with French spies. Aubrey undertakes three missions throughout the region, each time finding his missions foiled by the French intelligence networks’ advance knowledge of his missions from Malta. Stephen, meanwhile, tests out his diving bell, based on Edmond Halley’s design, and works to surreptitiously hamper the French spy networks’ efforts without further jeopardizing himself. The Surprise, nearly a recurring character in her own right prior to this, takes on a special significance when Admiral Ives informs Aubrey that she is to return to England to be sold out of the service, leading Aubrey to carefully contemplate the ship and her crew on their various missions. In a series of flashbacks, O’Brian explores Captain Aubrey’s examination to become a lieutenant.Like his previous novels, O’Brian perfectly recreates the world of the Napoleonic War in 1812, using Aubrey’s nostalgia at the coming retirement of the Surprise to view the life aboard ship, particularly aboard this idealized ship, through rose-colored glasses and with a sentimentality that will delight his readers. This Folio Society edition reprints the original text with insets containing historical portraits and sketches to illustrate some of the scenes. A great contribution to the Aubrey-Maturin series and the third of twelve to focus on what O’Brian described as an extended 1812, with these dozen books taking place between the beginning of June 1813 and November 1813.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Emily Dickinson said there is no frigate like a book. In the Aubrey-Maturin series this is especially true. O'Brian's stories of these two characters give the reader a trip through the era of sailing warships during the conflict with Napoleonic France. This story takes place in Malta and the eastern Mediterranean and also in the sweltering Red Sea, all vividly told.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In which Aubrey is back in Malta awaiting a promised command, the port teeming with French agents and rife with British corruption. Maturin plays a game of double-cross with Lesueuer (and unknowingly: with Wray), pretending to be seduced by Laura Fielding yet upholding his honour, and hers. Word arrives that a similar game may be played in London with Diana and Jagiello. The intrigue shifts from Malta to the Red Sea aboard Niobe, after transport on Dromedary and then a desert crossing by camel train, and dear Surprise is charged with convoy duty to Ithaca, perhaps its last mission before being sold out of the service.//Theme of cuckoldry continues, now targeting Charles Fielding given his wife's willingness to be used by French intelligence. O'Brian inserts a wry aside about a cuckold's neck, a nautical term.Jack's chelengk, and his rescue of Ponto from a well, and subsequent raised eyebrows about town.Stephen's diving bell, and French gold; Wray's gambling habit, and in lieu of payment: a new command for Jack? Attending to a bear, recently injured by crewmember Awkward Davis.The memorable action aboard Surprise with French man-of-war Mars and its attendant freighters, in tight quarters, Jack's seamanship delivering a satisfactory conclusion if no prize.O'Brian names the Captains Ball & Hamner; and glassmerchant Maimonides Moses.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    By this stage in the saga, opening one of these books is like sinking gratefully into a warm bath...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Treason's Harbour finds the crew of the Surprise in Malta while the ship undergoes repairs. Malta is crawling with spies, keeping Stephen Maturin particularly busy with espionage and counter espionage. Orders send Captain Aubrey and his crew on missions that could be compromised by leaked intelligence. Will the combination of Aubrey's nautical skill and Maturin's sharp mind keep the Surprise and its men from falling into a trap?I've wanted to try this series for a while because I've heard so many good things about it. Normally I wouldn't start in the middle of a series, but I picked this one up because I needed a book set in Malta. Enough of the series back story is included so that I didn't feel like I was missing information crucial to the plot. I thought the ending was rather abrupt, leaving some major plot threads unresolved. I liked it well enough to want to read more in the series, but I'm torn between continuing from this point in the series so I can find out what happens next or going back to the beginning of the series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another rollicking adventure of Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, with espionage at the forefront as Maturin tries to foil the efforts of French agents in Malta. More good nautical storytelling from O'Brian.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great return to form after the doldrums of The Ionian Mission. Two bits that I love: "the city of Valetta was as cheerful as though it were fortunate in love or as though it had suddenly heard good news." And Captain Aubrey looking through the stern-window: "This was a sight that never failed to move him: the noble curve of shining panes, wholly unlike any landborne window, and then the sea in some one of its infinity of aspects; and the whole in silence, entirely to himself. If he spent the rest of his life on half-pay in a debtors' prison he would still have had this, he reflected, eating the last of the Cephalonian cheese; and it was something over and above any reward he could have possibly contracted for." Quibble: I think Stephen should have figured out the double agent pretty quickly.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Another cliff hanger and this novel has a bit more tension than normal as the intelligence game heats up and the reader knows more than Stephen does. Mr. O'Brian flings his men into the Red Sea (and through a bit of desert along the way) which makes for a change of scenery.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Summary/Review: The nautical adventures of Aubrey and Maturin continue. This is an average story that includes some interesting spying intrigue, Stephen Maturin in a diving bell, a mission to Egypt, and a blessedly complete absence of Diana Villiers. Other than that it's a bit bland and feels like it's there to connect to the next novel more than anything else.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed this, but I also have to say that I’m having doubts. The pleasure of a roman fleuve is that each episode is a self-contained little yarn, while the larger life story of the characters ties the books together. O’Brian’s books followed that principle through the earlier volumes. However, of late, they haven’t. The subplots—Wray’s actions, Stephen and Diana’s marriage, Jack’s financial troubles—carry on from book to book, not as little background stories, but as major plot elements that do not get resolved.I enjoyed this book, but not because it moved the story along. It wasn’t even that it was full of action, for, even by O’Brian’s slender standards, there was little in this episode. I enjoyed it simply because I love O’Brian’s language, because his dry sense of humor appeals to me greatly, and because the characters are old friends. But, I’d really rather have more.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    More adventures of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, this time in Malta and the Red Sea. More espionage and high-sea adventure, where Aubrey learns the HMS Surprise is to be decommissioned, and Maturin's diving bell is put to use retrieving false prize from the bottom of the sea. Five stars.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Love this one :D The dog in the cistern scene is classic, lol!