Voyage of the Basilisk By Marie Brennan

Small warning: this is the third book in a series so I'm sorry if I'm vague or if anything is confusing, I just don't want to give anything away from the previous two books.

The fantasy series of which this is the third book is framed as being the memoirs of Lady Trent, a woman who over the course of many adventures and misadventures becomes a renowned dragon naturalist and now, at the end of her career, is creating a full account of that career.

In this book she has yet to marry the man who will make her Lady Trent so she is still known as Isabella Camherst when she boards The Basilisk for an extensive voyage to see more of the world's dragons. Throughout this voyage we learn more about the ancient Draconean race, the lives of sea serpents, the potentially nefarious uses of dragonbone, and the cultures of islands where dragons are to be feared and worshipped, but not necessarily understood.

Several storylines from the previous two books continue in this, which was fun as a reader. Many of the stories told in these books seem like they stand completely alone, until you start to read the next book and our author continues to remind you of important events from previous books that still have an impact on our current story.

Truly my only issue with this book is that my copy is inexplicably printed in blue ink instead of black. Is that a thing now? Cause I hate it. I eventually got used to it, but the first several chapters were a struggle as I kept getting distracted by the ink color.

I was also very excited when I finished this book to discover that there are two more books in the series. Since there were only ever copies of the first three in the store when I worked at Barnes & Noble I assumed that it was a trilogy, but I was wrong and there are more memoirs of Lady Trent for me to enjoy! They are currently in my shopping cart to be purchased soon, I will let you know how they are when I get them.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy. Marie Brennan does an amazing job of drawing us into this world and creating suspense over the life of this character, even though we know she survives (she couldn't be writing her memoir if she wasn't). In addition to the amazing stories, the covers are also beautiful if that's something that inspires you to purchase/read books.

XO, Ellen