Tag Archives: Liveship Traders

Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb (The Liveship Traders, Book 3)

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Synopsis:
The newly awakened dragon, the kidnapped satrap, the ships with living figureheads who are going insane, and the self-crowned King of the Pirate Isles come together in a rousing conclusion to the trilogy.

Review:
Ship of Destiny was just as much fun the second time around. I can forgive the crazy amounts of coincidence and deus ex machina because I just love the characters so much. I’d write more but I figure if you’ve gotten this far in the trilogy you already know how much you want to finish it!

Mad Ship by Robin Hobb (The Liveship Traders, Book 2)

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Synopsis:
With the Vestrit family’s Liveship captured by the pirate Kennit and the family falling into poverty, headstrong Althea Vestrit plans a daring plot to regain her ship, even as her niece Malta becomes the family’s ransom to the shadowy, deformed Rain Wild Traders.

Review:
I know, I know, the plots of second books always sound so silly. You need to know who everybody is in order to appreciate Mad Ship, and if you’ve read the first book I’m sure i don’t need to convince you to read this one.

I enjoyed revisiting Bingtown and the Rain Wilds, not just because this is the second book but because it’s also my second read. Robin Hobb really created something special in this series and I’m glad she’s chosen to continue it with books beyond this trilogy.

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb (The Liveship Traders, Book 1)

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Synopsis:
Althea Vestrit always thought she’d captain her family’s liveship, the Vivacia, newly quickened by the death of her father, but her sister’s husband’s machinations strip it from her hands, delivering the ship into a situation that threatens to break her mind, which puts her crew in mortal danger.

Review:
I loved returning to Bingtown and my beloved Althea Vestrit in this re-read (actually a listen) of Ship of Magic. Few things have captured my imagination as Hobbs liveships, sailing vessels with figureheads who can speak and who remember the way up the Rain River where treasure beyond price awaits collection.

The baby’s awake, more when I read book 2!

Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 3)

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Synopsis:
The bastard son of a dead king goes on a quest to find his missing uncle, gone to rouse the mythical Elderlings and save the Six Duchies from the fearsome Red Ship Raiders.

Review:
Assassin’s Quest reminded me why I fell in love with Robin Hobb. Despite some of the missteps in overly broad characterizations, I was swept away by the epic storytelling. I really got tired of the narrator of the audio version, and I have to say I’m a bit relieved that the Tawny Man trilogy isn’t available in audio form. I am excited to reread those stories as well, as well as revisit the Liveship Traders, which I have begun in audio form–and again, not crazy about the narrator. So we’ll see if I make it through. I’m a bit curious to see what it’s like to listen to Liveship Traders while reading the Tawny Man, since the former series precedes the latter in time, but the latter doesn’t offer too many spoilers. And since my readings of Dragon Keeper and Dragon Haven are so recent, I wonder how fresh the Liveship Traders will feel.

The Alphabet Meme

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Picked this meme up from Melanie, in honor of two YA books I read for work this weekend.

The goal of this is to list favourite authors according to last name (with a representative fave book as well).

Atwood, Margaret — Cat’s Eye
Bronte, Charlotte — Jane Eyre
Card, Orson Scott — Ender’s Game
Dragonwagon, Crescent — The Year It Rained (with Paul Zindel)
Eager, Edward — Half Magic
Forster, EM — Howard’s End
Gibson, William — Neuromancer
Hobb, Robin — Ship of Magic
Ishiguro, Kazuo — And Never Let Me Go
Jackson, Shirley — Hangsaman
King, Stephen — The Gunslinger
Lewis, CS — Till We Have Faces
Martin, George RR — Game of Thrones
Novik, Naomi — His Majesty’s Dragon
Oates, Joyce Carol — Blonde
Percy, Walker — The Last Gentleman
Queenan, Joe — If You’re Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble
Rendell, Ruth — Judgment in Stone
Smith, Wesley — Culture of Death
Tolkien, JRR — The Return of the King
Undset, Sigrid — Kristin Lavransdatter
Vine, Barbara — A Dark-Adapted Eye
Wharton, Edith — Twilight Sleep
X — I’ll read the next book someone recommends by an author whose last name starts with X.
Yancey, Phillip — Where is God When It Hurts?
Zarr, Sara — Story of a Girl

Top 20 Meme

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Picked this up from Becky:

The rules: Top twenty favourite books in no particular order. Don’t think about it for too long. Take twenty minutes only to compile your list. Bold the ones you’ve read, or reread, since you’ve started blogging. Include novels, non fiction and plays.

1. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
3. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
4. Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
5. Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
6. Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis
7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
8. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
9. Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
10. Asylum by Patrick McGrath
11. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
12. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
13. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
14. Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
15. Private Demons by Judy Oppenheimer
16. Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott
17. The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris
18. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
19. The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler
20. Birth at Home by Sheila Kitzinger

Robin Hobb – 3 Trilogies, One Love

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Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy and the follow up trilogy called The Tawny Man are medievalist fantasy fiction are among the best books I’ve ever read in any genre. I lost myself in these six books, missing my subway stop more than once. I would actually get excited when my alarm went off in the morning because I knew that soon, very soon, I’d be waiting for the train and could dive into the Six Duchies with abandon.

The Farseer Trilogy follows the bildungsroman model, and like many fantasies, Fitz is of humble origins (he is the bastard son of a dead prince), yet finds himself at the center of an adventure that could change the course of history. A typical plot, yet Hobb’s attention to detail, evocative writing, and fearlessness far surpass her peers–I’m thinking in particular of David Eddings’s Belgariad, which was fun but didn’t change my life. Fitz’s story did change my life, with Hobb’s deft explorations of the nature of responsibility and the meaning of leadership, and her heartbreaking revelations about the lies we tell ourselves and others in the name of love. All this with dragons! And I’ll add that these are new, different dragons, nothing like old Smaug. She creates a whole new mythology for these overexposed fixtures of fantasy fiction. Continue reading →