This was so great!I loved the world-building, with the persistent toxicity of everything, with societal class built upon the presence or absence of birth defects (which are numerous) and fertility (which is low)---right down to the keyshan bones that so crucial to seafaring, and which apprently cause some type of illness among people who work too closely with them. But all of this is background. The world kills you if the sea doesn't get there first, and if you live long enough to meet other people, they'll kill you too. But along with this we have the magnificent gullaime and arakeesian (wonderful creatures), and the richness and complexity of nautical jargon that is entirely novel to this story (thus not requiring any nautical experience on the part of the reader), and yet feels as rich as anything Patrick O'Brian ever wrote. (Indeed, I do sometimes get the feeling that certain scenes or components of battle were taken directly from Patrick O'Brian and then translated into the new jargon that Barker has invented--which works very well!) The politics on land still manage to influence the workings of what happens at sea, even when the world becomes the closed-off microcosm of the ship. And the structure of the tale---redemption arc, secondary character witnessing the origin story of a hero-mentor, getting the crew together for a mission, whose parameters change and shift as things play out--is very satisfying. It also works well as a self-contained book, but I'm definitely buying and reading the second one right away.