Main body has light, nonspecific spoilers. Major spoilers are marked.
I read Farseer first and loved it. Before I read Liveship, I did some digging to see if I was necessary to the overall Realm of the Eldering’s story. The main answer I got was “it’s not crucial but it’s probably Hobb’s best work”. After reading it through I gotta say….eh.
Don’t get me wrong, it held my attention well enough that I read straight through the whole Trilogy, but towards the end especially it felt like Hobb just totally lost control of the narrative. In the last book, I genuinely think more than 100 pages were dedicated to the plot contrivance of “one character thinks something about another character that the audience knows isn’t true”. I mean seriously, Character A thinking Character B is dead is fine, but SO MUCH of the last book was dedicated to Character A grieving Character B, and Character B grieving Character A, or one character having “unrequited” love for another when *we know the entire time* that none of it is true. It wasted so much time in my opinion because it just happened over and over.
In addition, I just found myself caring so much less about the relationships between most of the characters. >!The will they/won’t they between Althea and Brashen in particular just never held my interest. Molly and Fitz’s relationship felt so much more important and was developed so much better than these two adults who just kept misunderstanding each other!<
I do however see how it is going to provide a lot of context to the rest of the realm of the Elderlings saga and it was definitely worth the read. Just a lot of time and paper wasted in the last book on what I feel to be a very frustrating plot contrivance.
Finally, big spoiler. >!Althea being raped…..sucked. I get it, it’s something that happens and I’m glad Hobb didn’t shirk away from that reality, but I hated reading it. But what I hated reading just as much is how Paragon took away her pain magically. I feel like it went against Althea’s character to need anyone to take away her trauma in such a way. People heal, and I would have much rather read more about her gradual healing process than to just have a magic fix for something that people actually go through. (I do also get that there was some kind of magical pain transference between Kennit and Althea as well, but the idea of the “healing” didn’t sit right with me)!<
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by imamime43