The Silver Hand (Tides of Magic #2) by Shawn Carpenter
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure, fantasy, historical fantasy, military fantasy
Series: Tides of Magic #2
Pages: 432
Published by S&S/Saga Press on August 11, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The swashbuckling sequel to The Price of Redemption filled to the brim with hauntings, naval battles, and sorcery—perfect for fans of Patrick O’Brian and Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series.

Captain Rue Nath is sailing towards what he hopes isn’t his certain doom. As he guides the Redemption into port, the people cheer him and his crew as a hero. But a court martial awaits that could leave him ashore for years, or worse, strip him of his naval rank for good.

But Magister Enid d’Tancreville will do anything in her power to keep that from happening. After escaping the Theocratic Revolution and discarding her dream of fighting against the ‘Rats in the army, she’s not too keen to give up her new position as Captain Nath’s right hand and sorcerer. As Enid tries to drum up support for her beloved captain, Rue must decide whether to take the hand his enemies have dealt him or prove them wrong once again. Even if that means commanding a ship whose captains have only ever met perilous ends.

My Review:

The Silver Hand is the follow-up to the absolutely marvelous first book in the Tides of Magic series, The Price of Redemption. And it was well worth the damnable two year wait to get it.

When Captain Rue Nath brings Redemption back into port, he knows whatever is waiting for him is going to be terrible. And he’s right. Nath is a thorn in the side of the Admiralty – not because he’s not a winning captain and not because his crew doesn’t perform well (not that Admiralty gives a fig about ANY crew). The Admiralty needs to grind Nath under their heel because he isn’t able to hide his contempt for them all. He achieved his captaincy on merit and doesn’t kowtow to the lords and fools who think that privilege buys competency. Or, for that matter, nobility.

They plan to make him pay for his cheek. By keeping him from the one thing he loves most – the bridge of a ship. But Rue and his friends manage to get around that through the court of public opinion, so they’ll make him pay for that too.

By assigning him to a bad luck ship that has killed four captains so far, and by forcing him to take the hardest of a hard lot of mutineers as part of his crew. As if that shouldn’t be enough to break him or bury him, they’ve given him a suicide assignment. There’s no way that even Rue Nath’s infamously good luck and better seamanship and leadership is going to get him out of the pot they plan to boil him in.

Little does the Admiralty know that it’s actually worse than they believed – at least when it comes to the bad luck ship and the use that ship can make of the mutinous crew. But Nath has always been gifted when it comes to the loyalty of his friends – among the living AND the dead.

With the sorcerous assistance of his best friend and ship’s mage, the former Ardain (read as France) noblewoman Enid d’Tancreville (the tale of their meeting and first adventure is The Price of Redemption), Nath will emerge, yet again, bloody but unbowed, and prepare himself to face yet another battle with the Admiralty for his utter inability to let them grind him down.

Very much like one of the terrific series that the Tides of Magic was inspired by, the Aubrey and Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian, this second book in the series ends, not in the same place it began precisely, but with Captain Rue Nath and his crew in an entirely too similar – and similarly terrible – kettle of fish.

His mission his been mostly successful, but his crew has been decimated, his ship needs repair, and he’s not dead or disgraced the way that he was supposed to be – at least not in the opinion of the self-serving, self-dealing, self-aggrandizing autocrats in charge of the Admiralty. Rue knows that he – and his people – are going to pay for their success, one way or another. Or more likely several.

But the winds are carrying him, his friends, his crew, and his battered ship towards home. Whatever doom is waiting for them, he will, and we will, find out in the next book. I sincerely hope we don’t have to wait another two years (or heaven forbid, MORE) for it. But if needs must, we’ll wait as long as necessary, however impatiently.

Escape Rating A+: I started this series with The Price of Redemption two years ago because it looked like exactly what it turned out to be – just better. And just a bit different.

The Napoleonic Wars, the real historical ones, were the backside of the glittering Regency. And I do mean backside in all the scatological ways you might be thinking. All that glitter that Georgette Heyer immortalized rests uneasily on the back of a bloody revolution, a brutal (and bloody) decades long war, an economic collapse, grinding poverty, and a country at the whims of a madman and whoever could catch his ear. That his profligate son was at least somewhat of an improvement says entirely too much about pretty much everything.

But in fiction, the Napoleonic Wars are a gift that just keeps on giving. This series is one of those gifts – as are all of the previous series – in all genres – that went into the making of it.

If you’ve ever read the Horatio Hornblower series, or the marvelous Aubrey and Maturin series, or Honor Harrington or Temeraire (that’s two historical fiction, one science fiction and one fantasy with dragons instead of ships) all of those series are based, not merely on the Napoleonic Wars, but on one particularly colorful, larger-than-life but still real life historical figure, Thomas Cochrane. So there are plenty of resemblances between all the protagonists and all of their adventures, you just have to look.

So the differences between – and the way that they each make use of their fantastic (in multiple senses of the word) settings and characters, are what makes each of those series, including this one, fascinating and different and individually compelling – even if some of the beats of the story seem just a touch familiar.

Part of what the above means, and it was true for the other series as well, is that the Tides of Magic draws the reader in by absorbing them in the life and details of the ship, its officers, its crew, and the world in which they operate. So the reader ends up feeling like they’re part of the ship – albeit a landlubberly part – as they get acclimated to the world. It should be boring. In fact, you’d think all the naval terminology and details would be boring. But they’re not at all. It’s very much as if the reader gets their sea legs right along with Enid.

Which is the other thing about this particular series. Nath is the protagonist, but he’s not the one whose perspective we follow. The story is told from Enid d’Tancreville’s perspective, because she’s the character we’re learning alongside of. Nath is who he is when we first met him – even if neither the reader nor Enid know his depths or his secrets. Enid, OTOH, is the character in the midst of change. From Ardain to Albion, from aristocrat to officer, from researching magic to ship’s practitioner, from being protected to doing the protecting.

While Rue may be moving the story forward, Enid is the one pushing it from behind. They’re a team – but absolutely NOT a romantic one. Not that both don’t fall in love in this second book, but absolutely NOT with each other. And it’s better that way. The friendship is purer and truer because it’s platonic, and it’s considerably easier for Rue to assert his necessary and absolute authority when it comes to the ship’s business. A romance between them would have muddied the waters considerably and not in a good way.

A big part of what sets this particular series apart is the magic system AND the magic of the world. It’s also a big chunk of this particular story as it’s wrapped around the ‘bad luck’ infesting the ship, the mutiny that it feeds and is fed by it, AND Enid’s ongoing transformation from who she thought she was to who she’s meant to be.

Something that I expect we’ll get more of in the next book. Which is possibly the final book, but I kind of doubt that and don’t know what to hope for. The Tides of Magic series was originally billed as a trilogy, BUT as this second book ends it doesn’t feel like a middle book. More importantly, it feels as if there’s a lot more story left to come than could – or possibly should – fit in a single volume.

I don’t know what to hope for in that regard, I just know I’d rather not wait two years for the next book and another two years after that for the finale – if then. But if I must, I must. Because this series is awesome in itself and it does ALL its inspirations and predecessors and precedents proud into the bargain!