Wow. This book was a goddamned DELIGHT.

"Gay magical murder cruise" is a pretty accurate pitch tbh, but it doesn't really capture how much *more* there is to this book. (I cannot adequately express the depths of my desire for a dragon servant named Dumpling.)

It's written in the POV of Ganymedes ("Dee") Piscero, aka Fish, aka Pissfish, who has instantly become one of my favorite protagonists ever: he's the reluctant heir to an unimportant fishing province who masks both his innate kindness and his self-loathing in irreverent clownishness. He's chubby, anxious, imperfect, and 100% relatable -- the kind of hero the world could use more of.

I won't rehash the plot here, but suffice to say that the worldbuilding is rich and fascinating, the characters are diverse and all highly distinctive, and the pacing is relentless in the best possible way. A genre-blending smorgasbord, *Voyage of the Damned* somehow manages to be hilarious and poignant and sad and bloody and kind and triumphant and cathartic all at once. It's what you'd get if you threw Agatha Christie and Terry Pratchett into a blender, with perhaps a dash of The Goblin Emperor and some Legends & Lattes for good measure.

Frances White has pulled off a masterful debut and I can't wait to see what she writes next.