I intended to start this book yesterday and accidentally swallowed it whole.

I didn't love this one quite as much as Isle of Blood and Stone, but I've never met a Makiia Lucier book yet that wasn't effortless to read.

This was a lot of fun. Not a deep, complex, epic scale fantasy. It's a tightly-written story with focused scope and no unnecessary flab, and I enjoyed it a lot.

(Obligatory ghost cameo, check. Obligatory plague cameo, check.)

Reyna is a royal mapmaker on a voyage for St John de la Mar when disaster strikes her ship. She washes ashore in a foreign land, and from there adventures begin that end in uncovering a far bigger threat than just ordinary pirates. Reyna and Levi's romance was just at the level I approve of -- present, but not oppressive, and the story never lost my interest.

I always wish Makiia Lucier's books included more. Would it hurt us to spend a few chapters doing nothing to advance the plot, just learning more about the characters and world? But this is her style and it works well, so the only real weak spot I would point out is the ending.

Reyna simply spills her guts to a foreign king, and boom. Problem solved. It certainly makes one wonder why this couldn't have been done a lot earlier, and seems like a poor option to count on. The king had done nothing to make himself seem particularly kind, honest, or trustworthy. What if he hadn't been? This could have gone terribly for everyone involved.

Overall, though, this was a shot of compressed fantasy adventure injected directly into my veins, and it was great.