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The second in the Ship Kings series has a cinematic feel and shares the first-rate quality of the first book. Set in a fantasy world where island folk live in unsettled peace under the ruling mariner class, it continues the tale of Dow Amber as he sets off on a sailing adventure aboard the battleship Chloe. He and the unusual scapegoat girl Ignella are the only outsiders aboard the Ship Kings’ vessel as it embarks on a voyage into the northern icy seas, seeking the lost son of the Sea Lord.
- Book 1 Title: Ship Kings: The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice
- Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $22.99 hb, 379 pp, 9781742378220
Complex personal relationships are explored through the formal hierarchy of the ship, and physical challenges provide drama. Tattooed sailors, terrible sea creatures, perilous reefs, and dangerous ice-laden waters make this a marvellous seafaring adventure.
As in the classic Moby-Dick the ocean is revealed in its full majesty and has a vital presence. A ship full of sailors trapped in the cavity of a toppling iceberg is one of the terrible and thrilling images that later haunt the imagination.
McGahan uses the arresting symbol of an albatross to introduce an element of mystery and to pose intriguing questions about fate and destiny. Is fate shaped by self-will or is it driven by the unknowable and mediated by superstition and soothsayers as the sailors believe?
That omens occur and strange happenings unfold around Dow lends the story a metaphysical undercurrent.
This is a richly imagined world of creaking timbers, tall masts and muscled sailors amid the complex social order of a ship of 600 men. McGahan’s lyrical prose makes you feel the sway of hammock and hear the sea thumping against the hull.
Not all young readers will hang in with a prologue that’s loaded with historical background, but no mind. By chapter one they’ll be sailing.
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