cbr17bingo: favorite (completes my first BINGO)
I don’t think Robin Hobb can fully turn me into a wholehearted lover of multiple POV storytelling, but if anyone can, it will be her. I got frustrated each time the POV shifted because I wasn’t ready to be done with the one I was currently reading, and each time I was very quickly sucked into the new one. While I still had favorite and less preferred character POVs, each was still compelling in their own way.
Robin Hobb writes villains incredibly well. While some of them are a little more one-note (like Regal in the Farseer trilogy, although even he is given enough backstory for readers to understand why is he the way he is), Kennit in the Liveship Traders books was well-developed and nuanced. I hated him, kind of came around on him a bit—though certainly not as much as Wintrow, understandably since we get more of Kennit’s inner life than Wintrow does—and then hated him again. And even as I hated him, I had some understanding (not agreement, not empathy) of why he did what he did. I could feel bad for what he went through as a child and lament what it did to him.
Malta is another character who ends up practically a different person from the beginning of book 1 to the end of book 3. My main issue with Malta is her age. She can’t be more than 15, if that, by the end of this book, and she’s treated too much like a grown woman, not just by male characters but even, I think, by Robin Hobb. My rating of the book largely ignores this.
As expected, the plot is impeccable, the pacing is solid, and the character work is excellent. I really enjoyed this conclusion to the Liveship Traders trilogy, maybe even more than that of the Farseer trilogy. I can’t wait to continue my Realm of the Elderlings journey in October.