This is book 2 of the "Gentleman Bastard Sequence" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

I came really close to stalling out in the first third of this book. Locke and Jean lose their friends and their home and most of their possessions and are allegedly (no evidence for the existence of such a poison is ever presented) poisoned with something that requires regular antidotes to avoid an unpleasant death.

Things start to pick up a bit when they get captured by a real pirate while they're posing as pirates. The nautical adventures are interesting; the sailing tech is good, but they have no firearms, which totally changes the dynamics of sailing combat. Given the level of alchemy supported, they'd certainly be able to make gun powder.

And now they just have to finish up their big con (which they do, and lose on due to having been outsmarted) and carry out their revenge, which they sort of do. I made it all the way through, but it was not a very pleasant book. And they're left in a yet-worse situation, so I suspect the next book of being grimmer still. I may well not read it until I've seen a number of reviews.