Ship of Magic: review

Riveting. •••••
20th May 2003

This is the first book in The Liveship Traders trilogy (before The Mad Ship and Ship of Destiny).

Althea Vestrit is the 19-year-old daughter of a family of Bingtown Traders, the only community who can possess a Liveship, a magic vessel made of wizardwood, a precious and legendary ware. Always her father's favourite, she spent all her childhood on board the family's Liveship, the Vivacia, whom she's come to love more than anything.

Alas, the captain is very ill and is going to die soon. He has to be taken on board the Vivacia so that with his death, the third of a family member on the ship's deck, the latter can undergo her quickening. Althea knows that when the Vivacia awakens, she'll become hers to sail. Only at the last moment, she discovers that her mother and sister have convinced her father to leave the ship to Althea's brother-in-law, an execrable and authoritative Chalcedean, Kyle Haven. And as the Vestrits are crippled with debt, it won't be long until Kyle starts trading in the most profitable of goods, slaves.

Banned from her own deck, desperate to have to leave the only recently quickened and emotionally fragile ship to such a horrid fate, she decides to run away. Disguised as a boy, she'll work on a slaughter ship and try to gain a ship ticket, a token to prove Kyle she's tough enough to become the rightful captain of the Vivacia. Knowing the ship has to be comforted to sail safely, Kyle drags his 13-year-old son Wintrow from his monastery where he's studying to become a Priest of Sa, and forces him to work as deck hand. Soon though, Wintrow reluctantly admits his bond with the Vivacia.

Kennit, captain of the Marietta, is a pirate whose dearest dream is to become King of the Pirates. He knows that if he helps freeing slaves, he'll gain the reconnaissance of their families and friends, the people of the Pirate Islands. With his first mate Sorcor, he decides to stop looting merchant ships and start chasing Liveships and attacking Slavers instead...

I read Robin Hobb's astounding Farseer Trilogy more than a year ago, and it instantly became my favourite series, the one to which I've compared everything I've read since. Knowing that the third and last book of The Tawny Man, the sequel to the Farseer, will only come out in paperback in more than a year from now, I have forced myself to wait until now to read Robin Hobb's other trilogy, The Liveship Traders. So you can imagine how much I expected, how much hope I'd placed in these books, how much I feared I wouldn't like them as much. But the only thing I can tell after reading the first volume is that it didn't disappoint me. At all. The story is tremendouly gripping, the descriptions fascinating, the characterization flawless. Everything Robin Hobb touches is gold. Don't overlook her!