This is the second of Hobb’s “Liveship Traders” trilogy, following Ship of Magic. In that volume we discovered the city of Bingtown, which perches on the Cursed Shore near the mouth of the Rain Wild River. We also discovered the Bingtown “liveships”, ships made of rare wizardwood from up the Rain Wild River that with time actually come to life and can speak and move for themselves. (The face of a liveship is its figurehead, naturally.) We met a range of people, including Althea Vestrit, who was cheated of command of the liveship Vivacia and wishes to regain it; her nephew Wintrow, priest-in-training, who is forced against his will to travel with Vivacia; his sister, Malta, who is young, callow, melodramatic, ignorant, and rash; and Kennit, a pirate captain who wishes to be a pirate king.

We also met the mad liveship Paragon, who twice set out with a full crew and returned later (years later, in one case) capsized and empty. When he returned the second time, his face hewn with an axe so that he could no longer see, his owners beached him. For many years, Paragon has been chained above the high watermark so that he can never float again.

Now Kennit has taken Vivacia, and Althea’s only chance to recover her is to restore mad Paragon to service. Meanwhile, war is brewing with Chalced…and very odd things are happening far up the Rain Wild River.

In general, I like this book rather better than its predecessor; we actually begin to learn a few things about the origin of the liveships and a number of other mysteries, and at this point in the story arc the more childish of the principal characters have gained a pleasant taste of maturity. I confess that I picked up the third book in the trilogy, Ship of Destiny, no more than an hour after laying this one down.

As a side note, the author’s biography points out something I hadn’t previously noticed: Hobb has also written under the pen name “Megan Lindholm”, including one book (The Gypsy) with Steven Brust.