Ship of Magic - Robin Hobb

Set in the same world as her earlier FARSEER trilogy but further down the coast in Bingtown, THE LIVESHIP TRADERS is the second fantasy series by successful authoress, Robin Hobb who once again here shows she is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to fantasy fiction. Little is mentioned of her previous trilogy except for a few cursory references so there is no need to have read any of the FARSEER novels before reading this. The first and immediate difference that leaps at you from the first page is that this is written in the perspective of the third person rather than the first person narrative of the central character and this does take a little ...  Read the complete review

This is the first book that i ahve read by robin hobb and i was pleasently intrigues by the fantasy of this book. Ship of Magic is the first of a series, The Liveship Traders. The basic premise of the series is that ships made of wizardwood, a very expensive wood available in the inhospitable lands of the Rain Wild River, can magically ripen into sentience--a liveship. This awakening takes three generations of captains from one of the trader families of Bingtown, a trading port on the Cursed Shores. Each ship is extremely expensive, and a trader family might have to work for generations to pay one off. While there is no single central character per ...  Read the complete review

This is the first of Robin Hobb’s new trilogy “The Liveship Traders”. This series is based primarily in Bingtown rather than the Six Duchies of the previous Farseer Trilogy. However, the most facinating thing about this series is the liveships on which the trilogy bases its name. The ships that the Trader families use, for which they mortgage their holdings and even risk their family members, retain the memories of the Trader family to which they belong and actually come to life when three generations of the family have died on their decks. In this series we find more heroines than we did in The Farseer Trilogy, however, ...  Read the complete review