Mad Ship

Executive Summary: I really enjoyed this book. I rated book 1 in this trilogy as a 4 as well, but on a scale of 10 book 1 would be an 8 and this would be a 9. There was a lot of setup in the first book that wasn't necessary in this one so the over-reaching story really started to pick up steam.

Full Review

This book does suffer a bit from “middle book syndrome”, but not that much for me to mind. The ending of the book seems reasonable for a book boundary, but would leave me frustrated if I didn't know there was another book to follow.

I learned answers to a lot of the questions I had from the first book, while adding new questions to be answered by the final book. Some things became more clear, but I feel there is still a lot to be revealed.


There is a lot of great character development in this book. Malta in particular who I wanted strangle every time she showed up in book 1 seems to finally growing up a little in this book. Ms. Hobb has always seemed to love to torment her characters and does an excellent job depicting growth in the face of this adversity.

I'm eagerly looking forward to finishing the final book in the trilogy.