The Mad Ship: Robin Hobb: Book 2 (The Liveship Traders) - Softcover

Hobb, Robin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0008117462 ISBN 13: 9780008117467

Publisher: HarperVoyager, 2015

Synopsis

‘Hobb is a remarkable storyteller’ GUARDIAN

The second volume in this superb trilogy from the author of The Farseer trilogy continues the dramatic tale of piracy, serpents, love and magic.

The Vestrit family’s liveship, Vivacia, has been taken by the pirate king, Kennit. Held captive on board, Wintrow Vestrit finds himself competing with Kennit for Vivacia’s love as the ship slowly acquires her own bloodlust.

Leagues away, Althea Vestrit has found a new home aboard the liveship Ophelia, but she lives only to reclaim the Vivacia and with her friend, Brashen, she plans a dangerous rescue.

Meanwhile in Bingtown, the fading fortunes of the Vestrit family lead Malta deeper into the magical secrets of the Rain Wild Traders. And just outside Bingtown, Amber dreams of relaunching Paragon, the mad liveship . . .

About this title

Review:

In Ship of Magic, Robin Hobb introduced us to the Bingtown traders and their comfortable world, just at the point where it starts to fall apart, a process which accelerates in this second book of the Liveship Traders series. Slavery and slave trading have come into fashion, and the old trading alliance with the strangely disfigured colonists of the Rain Wilds is falling apart. Their distant overlords in Jamailla are making demands of tribute and a slavery hating pirate captain has ambitions of his own. Hobbs' characters are complex and usually attractive; her sense of the conflicts that arise between imperfect goods is sophisticated. Above all, she shows a capacity for sympathy in unlikely places--Kennit, the pirate who constantly tries to deny that he has a conscience; Althea, who will sacrifice almost everything to her desire to get back control of the family ship; the ships themselves, intelligent beings whose grace and charm hide the fact that they are the victims of a crime nonetheless gross for being inadvertent. Like the Assassin trilogy before it, the Liveship Traders books take us to a world of beauty and strangeness, where actions plausibly have terrible consequences. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

‘Fantasy as it ought to be written’ George R.R. Martin

‘Hobb is superb’ GUARDIAN

'Hobb is one of the great modern fantasy writers... what makes her novels as addictive as morphine is not just their imaginative brilliance but the way her characters are compromised and manipulated by politics'
THE TIMES

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperVoyager
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0008117462
• ISBN 13: 9780008117467
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 912