Ship of Magic

The Liveship Traders, Book 1

By: Robin Hobb

Narrated by: Anne Flosnik

Length: 35 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships---rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. The fortunes of one of Bingtown's oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia. For Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy unjustly denied her---a legacy she will risk anything to reclaim.

For Althea's young nephew Wintrow, wrenched from his religious studies and forced to serve aboard ship, Vivacia is a life sentence. But the fate of the Vestrit family---and the ship---may ultimately lie in the hands of an outsider. The ruthless pirate Kennit seeks a way to seize power over all the denizens of the Pirate Isles...and the first step of his plan requires him to capture his own liveship and bend it to his will.

©1999 Robin Hobb (P)2010 Tantor

Critic reviews

“The characterizations are consistently superb.... Kudos to the author and encore!” ( Booklist, Starred Review)

Narrator is a bit annoying but good story

The narrator’s voice sounds like a women trying to speak in a high pitched low voice, that I found a bit annoying to listen to, trying to mimic what pirates are like. Also a bit monotone.

Put the narrator on 1.1 and all problems solved

I LOVE Robin Hobb and actually read these books a few years back but decided to start at the beginning of the whole realm of the elderlings series and just finished all the Assasins books. Switching narrators is hard and I for sure HATED this one for a while. I chugged through the first 10 hours then saw someone recommend speeding up the reading to 1.2. That was a little fast for me but 1.1 is PERFECT. No distortion, no strangely too slow narration. I was not enjoying her drawing out the characters voices soooo slow. The way she made them talk was not realistic. Speeding it up to 1.1 solved everything and actually made me enjoy her narrations for the rest of the book. If you love the story and don’t love thw performance, play with the read back.

No Chapters or Times

The book lacks all information about chapters, total time, or time elapsed. Lost my place and never found it again.

Good

I like that Robin is able to keep the stories of the Duchies and Bingtown separate. Lite mentions lets me know this same arena.?
The narrator is good, she is able provide different voices during the story. My only complaint is that when she speaks softly is too hard to understand her.

Weird narrator

I loved this book! The narrator was very strange but once I started listening at X1.25 speed it was perfect. At this speed the narrator was great and not distracting to the story at all. Highly recommended.

Couldn't be more pleased

I love the multiple storylines and how they intertwine. An interesting and unpredictable story with well rounded characters. I know some reviewers hate the narrator, but I can't imagine anyone else doing it. She just fits, and the voices she chose for each character somehow added to their development. I'll definitely be listening to the next book in this series.

Not as good as her first series

While I loved the far seer series, this showed a cool world and set up a second book,but there was no real central story. . I will keep going g because others have called this their favorite trilogy in the elderling series. But so far, the assassin's apprentice is much better.

a little disappointed

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I've listen to other books by Robin and enjoyed them but this one leaves you disappointed.

If you’ve listened to books by Robin Hobb before, how does this one compare?

yes, not as good.

What about Anne Flosnik’s performance did you like?

Anne does a outstanding job.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

no.

Outstanding! Fantasy At It's Best!

Not a book to read today, forget tomorrow. Three compelling stories weaving in and out. Characters fascinating and real. Settings compelling and rich. What more could one ask? Why, a sequel of course!

It was ok

The narrator made it difficult for me to get into the book. As for the story itself, it was interesting, however the entire cast of characters all seem to be grossly lacking common sense. There are several parts of the book where they act so completely idiotic(every single one of them) that you wonder how they all manage to not forget to breath....
I loved the Farseer books, but I just can't enjoy this one. Kennit is the only redeeming part of the story and even he is so simple minded that I wonder how he manages to dress himself in the morning.