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A review by adastrame
Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
adventurous
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
After reading The Farseer Trilogy, which is the predecessor to this trilogy, I struggled a bit with my expectation of The Liveship Traders. This book feels very different, despite it being set in the same universe.
What I struggled with most is the vast number of different POV characters (unlike in Farseer, where we only see the world from Fitz' perspective). In this book, there are about 10 or so POV characters of varying degrees of interestingness. I found some of them extremely tedious to read and often found myself speed-reading over those, especially if they dragged on. That is another issue I had with this book; there are a lot of scenes and conversation that go on and on and on with very, very little actual valuable content.
Aside from these issues, the premise is certainly fascinating, and there are characters that I enjoyed reading about, in particular Althea, Winthrow and Vivacia. I feel that if the whole book was just Althea's or Vivacia's POV, and if it was condensed to 400-500 pages (instead of 880), it would have been absolutely brilliant.
What I struggled with most is the vast number of different POV characters (unlike in Farseer, where we only see the world from Fitz' perspective). In this book, there are about 10 or so POV characters of varying degrees of interestingness. I found some of them extremely tedious to read and often found myself speed-reading over those, especially if they dragged on. That is another issue I had with this book; there are a lot of scenes and conversation that go on and on and on with very, very little actual valuable content.
Aside from these issues, the premise is certainly fascinating, and there are characters that I enjoyed reading about, in particular Althea, Winthrow and Vivacia. I feel that if the whole book was just Althea's or Vivacia's POV, and if it was condensed to 400-500 pages (instead of 880), it would have been absolutely brilliant.