I received this book through Library Thing's Early Reviewers program. This is the second book in the Around Curiosity's Edge series, and I had not read book one. It is possible to understand and enjoy this book without having read the prequel, but there are references to events or ideas that have already been discovered by the characters which are not explained again.

Raging Waters is well written, and it grabbed my interest from the first page. However, there is an extremely large cast of characters; twelve characters were introduced in the first five pages, and my list soon reached over 50 named entities. The characters range from human to mythological, drawing from cultures around the globe. The story is told in third person limited, although the protagonist changes to follow the events of several different groups. There is detailed world building, with three distinct societies: the Commons (the world we know), the Fringe (home to mythological creatures), and the Descended Lands (a middle ground between the two). The Fringe itself contains many distinct cities; Encante is a hidden city populated by dolphin-people, and according to Salem, it is very different from the Fringe city visited in the first book. There are also several revelations, although they may be less surprising to readers who have already read Hidden Meridians.