The Mad Ship

The Mad Ship is a fantasy novel by the American writer Robin Hobb, published in 1999. It is the second book of the Liveship Traders trilogy, which is the second trilogy in her longer Realm of the Elderlings sequence.

Aboard the liveship Vivacia, Wintrow saves Kennit's life by amputating the infected part of his leg, and Kennit sets about charming the ship until she believes in him and in his ambition of becoming King of the Pirate Isles, which she then helps him pursue by raiding slavers. Wintrow is wary of how attached Vivacia is becoming to the man, but comes to believe in him as well, and grows close to Etta in the same period.

Kennit has a past he keeps hidden from everybody: he was taken as a child by the pirate Igrot, who killed his father, cut out his mother's tongue and made the boy a pirate and abused him. Meanwhile Althea serves aboard the liveship Ophelia, which returns to Bingtown, where Captain Tenira resists the Chalcedean galley that serves the Satrap and collects his taxes, and more of the Old Traders begin to consider rebellion rather than pay.

Brashen, serving with a pirate ship, learns in Divvytown that Kennit has captured Vivacia, and takes that news back to Bingtown with him. Kennit, for his part, imprisons Kyle on the secret island where his mother lives in seclusion.