The second book in Amy Maroney’s Sea and Stone Chronicles trilogy, Sea of Shadows is also set in Rhodes, an exciting—if sometimes dangerous—port city. The Knights Templar are all that stands between the denizens of Rhodes Town and the infidels of nearby Turkey. As a result, the knights run the city. The reader is immediately immersed in the bustle of the harbor, where galleys, merchant ships, and fishing vessels enter the port. Gulls’ screeches mix with French, Arabic, Russian, Hebrew--languages filling the air as much as the spice merchants' wares scent it. A Syrian doctor in colorful, flowing silks, a French falconer, and knights wearing black tunics embroidered with the eight-pointed cross of the Order of St. John, are some of the characters in this most multi-cultural of stories. Anica Foscolo is one such citizen of Rhodes Town, with a Greek mother and a father of Genoese and Venetian descent. Anica is an artist who works with her father. She buys the minerals from Alexandria that serve as pigments for paints, prepares the oak panels that come from the Black Sea, and applies gold leaf on icons of saints. (See the icon of the Virgin & Child.) She used to paint the tempera backgrounds for her father, but more and more, she completes entire paintings as her father loses his vision. Not only that, but she has to teach herself how to paint in the new Northern European style patrons want. And that’s not Anica’s only problem. She’s of marriageable age, and her father has promised her to the son of a man to whom he’s deeply in debt. Anica didn’t expect to marry for love, but Troilo Salvieti is truly repulsive. And if Anica marries, she must give up painting. Who will support her family? On top of everything, Anica’s younger sister, Heleni, falls for a foppish French aristocrat, with disastrous results. It's a good thing Anica is such an intelligent and resourceful young woman, because even as conflict upon conflict piles up, she is restrained by her sex from implementing solutions. That’s where the Scottish privateer, Drummond Fordun, comes in. Anica resists her attraction to the handsome privateer—who transports everything from passengers and mail to plunder and slaves—but resistance proves difficult as she discovers that he is an honorable man, one who can help her fight for her family. This is a fully realized story. Every character has a backstory, the pacing increases exponentially as the plot grows more complex, and the setting is utterly fascinating. Also, as someone who writes about women artists, I was pleased with how the author described both the joy of being a virtuoso artist along the frustration of having to keep her talent a secret, lest her father’s paintings lose value.