Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Robin Hobb - The Liveships Traders Trilogy
Ship of Magic; The Mad Ship; Ship of Destiny.
It has been way too long since I read these books for me to be able to write a proper review. But it suffices to say that trilogies like these remain the reason that I read fantasy novels.
The only complaint I remember having was the conclusion to book 1 and book 3. There was no real conclusion in book 1, I suppose that you may not need one in the first book of a trilogy, but I think that the story should still lead somewhere. I was a little spoilt by having access to all the books at once, as I often do with trilogies, so it is hard to tell what I would dislike more if I had to wait a year or two for book 2 – would I hate no having an ending, or would I dislike having an ending that leaves much unexplained. I think that in the long run I want some kind of ending. The Eye of the World is a perfect example, apart from the whole we have to have a huge Last Battle (note the capitals) this could survive as a stand-alone novel (the cynical among us may say that it should have been).
Robin Hobb’s characterization is masterful. Her imagination is not chained by fantasy cliché. Her world has complex politics, actions have real implication, characters have real reactions. People do stupid things through ignorance, and generations are affected. There is no black and white; not unredeemable evil, or irreproachable good. Some characters we care about, others we hate – but we understand why they are doing what they are doing, whether we love it or despise it.
I guess it would be easy to dismiss the novel – ships are alive, can talk and move to some extent, and feel and respond to the emotions of the crew. Serpents are sentient, although fading, and are in fact a larval form of dragons. I guess this kind of stuff could turn people off. But it is a great story, you just have to let go a little and suspend disbelief just a tad. There are no plot flaws though, everything is completely internally consistent.
This is the type of fantasy that non-genre readers don’t realize exists. They know about sword and sorcery, and think that all fantasy readers are pimply teenagers reading Forgotten Realms and playing Dungeons and Dragons (not that there is anything wrong with that) Good fantasy is so much deeper than that, sure its fun to read about people hacking each other into ever smaller pieces, but sometimes it is good to read about people in adverse circumstances. These are people as real as those in any real world novel. It is simply there locale that differs.
I am hardly likely to convert many people here, and I am not sure I would know how to go about it, but I would very much like to be able to get more people to read fantasy. The more people read it, the more people will write and publish great novels like this one.
So how was that for a review that manages to rarely mention the actual novel? Seems like most reviews I read on websites are like that now – just the reviewer pushing their point of view, in my case ‘People should read more good fantasy novels thinly disguise as a review for Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders trilogy.
It has been way too long since I read these books for me to be able to write a proper review. But it suffices to say that trilogies like these remain the reason that I read fantasy novels.
The only complaint I remember having was the conclusion to book 1 and book 3. There was no real conclusion in book 1, I suppose that you may not need one in the first book of a trilogy, but I think that the story should still lead somewhere. I was a little spoilt by having access to all the books at once, as I often do with trilogies, so it is hard to tell what I would dislike more if I had to wait a year or two for book 2 – would I hate no having an ending, or would I dislike having an ending that leaves much unexplained. I think that in the long run I want some kind of ending. The Eye of the World is a perfect example, apart from the whole we have to have a huge Last Battle (note the capitals) this could survive as a stand-alone novel (the cynical among us may say that it should have been).
Robin Hobb’s characterization is masterful. Her imagination is not chained by fantasy cliché. Her world has complex politics, actions have real implication, characters have real reactions. People do stupid things through ignorance, and generations are affected. There is no black and white; not unredeemable evil, or irreproachable good. Some characters we care about, others we hate – but we understand why they are doing what they are doing, whether we love it or despise it.
I guess it would be easy to dismiss the novel – ships are alive, can talk and move to some extent, and feel and respond to the emotions of the crew. Serpents are sentient, although fading, and are in fact a larval form of dragons. I guess this kind of stuff could turn people off. But it is a great story, you just have to let go a little and suspend disbelief just a tad. There are no plot flaws though, everything is completely internally consistent.
This is the type of fantasy that non-genre readers don’t realize exists. They know about sword and sorcery, and think that all fantasy readers are pimply teenagers reading Forgotten Realms and playing Dungeons and Dragons (not that there is anything wrong with that) Good fantasy is so much deeper than that, sure its fun to read about people hacking each other into ever smaller pieces, but sometimes it is good to read about people in adverse circumstances. These are people as real as those in any real world novel. It is simply there locale that differs.
I am hardly likely to convert many people here, and I am not sure I would know how to go about it, but I would very much like to be able to get more people to read fantasy. The more people read it, the more people will write and publish great novels like this one.
So how was that for a review that manages to rarely mention the actual novel? Seems like most reviews I read on websites are like that now – just the reviewer pushing their point of view, in my case ‘People should read more good fantasy novels thinly disguise as a review for Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders trilogy.
