Two summers ago, I read Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy and reviewed it. She also wrote a trilogy called The Tawny Man, of which I reviewed the first and last books. These trilogies followed largely the same characters. In between the writing of these two series, Hobb wrote The Liveship Traders trilogy, of which Ship of Magic is the first volume. This series takes place in the same world as the other two, but on more or less the other end of it and the characters are 99% different from them. There's quite a bit of difference in the feel of the two--the first and third trilogies have a somewhat more "traditional" fantasy feel to them--swords, sorcery, castles, that sort of thing. The milieu here is a coastal land filled with traders and pirates in addition to the fantasy elements. 
 The primary magical conceit here is that a material called wizardwood can be carved into things which eventually become sentient--foremost among them being the magical liveships, living ships whose properties allow them to do things no ordinary ships could do, sailing faster and more easily, and trading up the magical Rainwild River. 
 The Vestrit family has purchased one of these liveships, taking on a debt of generations to acquire it. In order for its magic to "quicken" three members of the family, captains of the ship, have to die (typically at the natural end of their lives) upon the ship to be absorbed into it before the ship can come to life. The ship becomes bonded to the family and needs to have a family member aboard. Althea, the younger daughter of Ephron Vestrit, has been raised aboard the ship by her father in lieu of two dead brothers to someday inherit the ship. Ephron's untimely physical degeneration and death, however, finds the ship quickened, but the inheritance falling upon Althea's older sister and her husband Kyle, who has little understanding of liveships or of people. He drives off the disappointed Althea and brings his own unwilling son, who has been promised to the priesthood and studying for that life, onto the ship to satisfy the family requirement and force his son to become like him and inherit the ship eventually. Althea is determined to reclaim the ship she believes to be rightfully hers. In amongst this, we follow the story of the ambitious pirate Kennit, who wants to become king of the pirates and capture a liveship (basically impossible because of all the advantages a living ship). Except, of course, that we strongly suspect that he's going to succeed with this particular ship before the novel's over, as in fact he does. We also see Althea's mother and sister struggling with the financial future of the family and the growth of Kyle's spoiled, willful daughter. 
 All this is only a sampling of the plots and characters, but it should give you some sense of the complexity of the novel. Hobb deftly handles the characterization, clearly one of her strengths, drawing them in their own individual senses of themselves as well as allowing us to view them through the eyes of the other characters. Meanwhile, she skillfully weaves all of these characters and plots (and more besides) into a complex and fascinating pattern that is only beginning to emerge by the end of this novel. Though she brings the plot threads to a satisfying enough resting point, it's clear that much still remains to do in the subsequent novels.