A review by regnarenol
Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
4.0
This is a tough one for me. Everything about the book I wouldn't have liked a few years ago, and even now I took an absolute age to get through it but... there's something about it. First, Robin Hobb can write bloody well. Second, she creates deep, deep characters. Third, the 'story' that happens in this book can be compressed into fifty pages if you trim down all the 'characterization'. And therein lies the crux of my dilemma. This book isn't an exciting read by any means. But its characters starting with a wilful young woman called Althea who's deprived of her rightful inheritance to her selfish and money-minded brother-in-law Kyle to the pirate Kennit who wants to become the king of all pirates, all these characters straddle a very narrow portion of the good-evil spectrum. Nobody's faultless, and everybody has some good in them.
The upshot of all that middle-grounding of course is that this book is an immensely frustrating read. There are so many occasions when you feel like grabbing hold of one of those stubborn people that populate the story and shake some sense into them! I guess that's what makes these characters real though. Having said that, I will not gloss over the slow pace and the real lack of suspense in the story. (I'd pretty much worked out the ending of this book in the first fifty pages.) This book isn't for everyone - there isn't real action, in fact there is no action. If you can't associate with one or more of the characters in this book, then you're going to despise this book. But I did, and I didn't.
A note on the fantasy element of this book - the fantastical elements in the story - the liveships and the serpents aren't pivotal to the development of the story but they do work as intended. They offer a counterpoint to what would otherwise have been a plain old sea and sailing adventure yarn. And they offer mystery too, mystery the rest of the story doesn't. What exactly is a liveship? (No spoilers, so I don't want to speculate.) Are the serpents really dumb creatures that feed on human carcasses? I think the other two books in the series should answer those questions.
The upshot of all that middle-grounding of course is that this book is an immensely frustrating read. There are so many occasions when you feel like grabbing hold of one of those stubborn people that populate the story and shake some sense into them! I guess that's what makes these characters real though. Having said that, I will not gloss over the slow pace and the real lack of suspense in the story. (I'd pretty much worked out the ending of this book in the first fifty pages.) This book isn't for everyone - there isn't real action, in fact there is no action. If you can't associate with one or more of the characters in this book, then you're going to despise this book. But I did, and I didn't.
A note on the fantasy element of this book - the fantastical elements in the story - the liveships and the serpents aren't pivotal to the development of the story but they do work as intended. They offer a counterpoint to what would otherwise have been a plain old sea and sailing adventure yarn. And they offer mystery too, mystery the rest of the story doesn't. What exactly is a liveship? (No spoilers, so I don't want to speculate.) Are the serpents really dumb creatures that feed on human carcasses? I think the other two books in the series should answer those questions.