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)

Great story, narrator is good at 1.3x speed

Excellent story. Narration greatly improves at accelerated listening speeds. I started at 1.15x and eventually got to 1.3x, and will probably go faster in the next two books. Can't wait to listen to them.

Great story.... but

I love this world and stories. For me it took me half the book to get used to the reader. Trying to do different voices didn't work for me and to me her cadence was to methodical but in second half I didn't notice it... but the story was great

The story is good, the characters better. G.I.A.L.

Is there anything you would change about this book?

It needed a male narrator for some of the parts.

What did you like best about this story?

The action is evenly mixed between dialog, and the characters adventures.

What didn’t you like about Anne Flosnik’s performance?

She did an excellent job on the female parts.

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

I do not think so. I would rent it, if I felt it was going to have good Cinematography, and I believable cast.

Any additional comments?

The action is evenly mixed between dialog, and the characters adventures. The characters are well developed, interesting, and introduced in all the right places. What I like most about the story is the characters are unpredictable but always consistently true to their character.

Unlistenable

I'm sure the books are great, but the this is the worst narration I've ever come across.

I love this series!

I love this series! I read it in paperback many years ago and it still holds up. It's just a fantastic adventure fantasy book. The story is wonderfully layered. I love the many characters. I love the mystery. I love the whole thing! I highly recommend it. One of the best trilogies ever!

The narrator is okay, but not great. She is a little too dramatic in her reading. She does do different voices for each characters and is pretty true to herself throughout. I got use used to the over dramatization as it went along. I've definitely heard worse.

Interesting story, obnoxious narrator

Not as good as Farseer, but good nevertheless. Not quite an Epic Fantasy like Farseer either. A bit too much family bickering to be a great story, but I am hoping that is all part of the buildup for the next two books. Frustrating at times in the storyline when good people make foolish choices and bad people and abhorrent deeds flourish.

The narrator almost kept me from listening. The sample made me cringe and at first put me off entirely. Reading other similar complaint reviews about the narrator led me to feedback suggesting to listen at 1.25 speed, which I did and it made her far more tolerable. She still trails off every time she ends a sentence with something like "her" which she reads as "huhrrrrr." I got used to her voice about half way through, but never stopped having to ignore that obnoxious, unnecessary, overly theatrical drawing out of words. I am hoping there is more connection between this trilogy and Farseer, as my main interest is in how this trilogy fits in with the rest of the trilogies in the series.

Really padded

Honestly it’s so padded out with superfluous sentences and flat out ‘telling not showing’ in long slogs it’s almost unreadable.

Robin Hobb captures me again.

I didn't think she'd write other characters that I liked as much as Fitz and the Fool. She did. Don't be turned away by the bad reviews criticizing the narration. This is worthy of your time.

pause or something

too often I skip back, thinking I missed something, when what I missed was any kind of pause, breath, or other indication that a different character was now the narrators focus or perspective.
I enjoyed this, as I did when I read the book series, it is almost as nice to listen to. Thank you

Amazing writing, grating narration

I haven’t read or listened to a Robin Hobb book I haven’t liked, and this is no different. The narrator was the only low point of the experience.