Napoleon escapes from Elba, and the fate of Europe hinges on a desperate mission: Stephen Maturin must ferret out the French dictator's secret link to the powers of Islam, and Jack Aubrey must destroy it. Napoleon, like a vengeful phoenix, pursues his enemies across Europe. If he can corner the British and Prussians before their Russian and Austrian allies arrive, his genius will lead the French armies to triumph at Waterloo. In the Balkans, preparing a thrust northwards into Central Europe to block the Russians and Austrians, a horde of Muslim mercenaries is gathering. They are inclined toward Napoleon because of his conversion to Islam during the Egyptian campaign, but they will not move without a shipment of gold ingots from Sheik Ibn Hazm which, according to British intelligence, is on its way via camel caravan to the coast of North Africa. It is this gold that Aubrey and Maturin must at all costs intercept. In Algiers, Maturin navigates the violent currents of oriental politics and braves a desert journey that ends in a moonlit lion hunt high in the Atlas Mountains. Aubrey's quarry is a swift xebek of the Algerian corsairs: through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic, he chases them to a bleak and apparently impregnable fortress island. Boldly conceived and brilliantly executed, The Hundred Days is Patrick O'Brian's most ambitious book yet, and surely one of his most rewarding. In this climactic-but not final!-adventure in the celebrated Aubrey/Maturin series, O'Brian succeeds in grafting his familiar, ever compelling principal characters to an historical event of tumultuous significance: the final defeat of Napoleon. The result is entertainment, excitement, and an intriguing exercise in "what if..." history, all encompassed in a magnificently rounded and complex work of fiction.