I finished the Farseer Trilogy and moved on to Hobb's second series set in the Realm of the Elderlings.

Unlike Farseer, which uses first-person point of view, Liveships uses a third-person omniscient point of view, giving us insight into both the heroes and villains of the story. All of the characters are morally complicated, as the heroes are deeply flawed and the villains possess hidden virtues (well, some of them do).

It's a pretty good story about a family who has fallen on hard times and has to make difficult choices to survive while the world they inhabit changes around them. There's very little magic in this fantasy story. Most of it involves the "liveships"--living breathing sailing ships that can speak and act of their own accord. I think you could retell this story in a modern setting if you changed the "liveship" to a modern cargo vessel equipped with AI. That's how little magic is involved here.

In the second book of the Liveship Traders series, the liveship Vivacia has been captured by Captain Kennit, a wannabe pirate king who seeks to use Vivacia to consolidate his hold over the other pirate ships. Meanwhile, the free city of Bingtown is being corrupted into a vassal state of the Satrap through his mercenary allies.

We also get more insight into the nature of magic as it applies to the Rain Wilds traders that are the source of Bingtown's wealth and prestige.