An Edwardian murder mystery set aboard a ship crossing the Atlantic while a magical MacGuffin goes missing. As Maud is thrown into tracking down the killer and retrieving the MacGuffin, she is thrown into the arms of a scandalous magical actress. 

This follows on from A Marvellous Light, but with a different location and cast. To be honest I forgot large chunks of the first one but followed just fine. While Marvellous Light focused a lot more on romance between Robin and Edwin than the broader plot, this also focuses on Maud and Victoria. Although I feel it held its pacing for the plot a little better as they slowly unravelled the mystery trapped at sea for the voyage. Oddly enough keeping it in a tin can seemed to help the world building a bit more than the first. 

I certainly enjoyed the constant ribbing at the endless spectre of societal scandal (excellent pillow talk with “I should have looked into this debauchery business years ago”), the history of the secretive magical women’s Forsythia Club and the relationships between most of the main characters. That said, I found the villains of the plot to be incredibly lacklustre and unmenacing which undercut a fair bit of drama along with the stakes being quite hypothetical.