Terrific.

This is the second book in The Liveship Taders trilogy (after Ship of Magic and before Ship of Destiny).

After being banned from the deck of the slaughter ship the Reaper because she's a woman, without her well-deserved ship ticket, and after breaking up with her companion Brashen Trell, Althea Vestrit is hired as mate on board a Bingtown-bound Liveship, the Ophelia. And when the ship betrays her secret to Captain Tenira, Althea fears she'll be given the sack again. Luckily it doesn't happen and soon the crew and ship rally to her cause, promising they'll help her gain her rightful heirloom, the Liveship Vivacia, back.

But not so far on the seas, the Vivacia has just been boarded by Kennit's gang of pirates and her crew taken prisoners, thanks in part to the rebellion of the slaves that made up her cargo. In exchange for his life and that of his father, Wintrow will have to heal Kennit gangrenous leg stump. The situation seems desperate.

And all the while in Bingtown 12-year-old Malta, Wintrow's sister and Althea's niece, is waiting for her father to return with his precious cargo that is supposed to help her family pay off their debts to the Khuprus of the Rain Wilds, her suitor Reyn's family. But since she's opened Reyn's courting Dreambox, she's been having troubling dreams about a dragon pleading for her help.

Parallelly, Amber the beadmaker is making scandalous plans to buy the Paragon, a abandoned Liveship who is believed mad, and his majesty the Satrap Cosgo of Jamaillia and his court are on their way to Bingtown.

Once again Robin Hobb has wrought a wonderful epic tale of ships and serpents, love, magic and intrigue. The more pages you turn, the more you realise her world is a truly enchanting and mysterious one, where characters never stop growing in depth, especially young and capricious Malta who matures a lot in the course of this book. Robin Hobb writes so terrifically well, her stories flow so naturally that you wish they'd never end.

10/10