I love Robin Hobb more and more every time I read another of her books. She is now in my top 5 list of people I would love to meet before I die.
This book only appeared on my bookshelf in the last 3 days, so it's a bit of a cheat from my bookshelf mission. But I honestly can't help myself. I'm on holidays so how am I expected to be able to resist her wondrous wiles? I absolutely and utterly cannot help myself. I'm captivated by her...I could write a song about how cool she is. Now that I've done some research, I'm even more blown away. I know this is a total RH love-in. I suspect it's just going to get worse so skip the next 2 paragraphs if you can't cope with the smalch. Actually, it's pretty much that all the way through, so read on at your peril.
Robin Hobb is the European Medieval Fantasy pen name for (fanfare) Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden (is it just me or is Astrid Lindholm suspiciously like Astrid Lindgren?). She writes under another pseudonym which is Megan Lindholm and covers contemporary sci fi.
MALR was born in California in 1952. She then spent a lot of time in Alaska. She married at eighteen and sold her first short story and began writing for children's magazines. It's kind of all been writing from there on. Her first Robin Hobb novel is apparently sitting at the 1 mill copies mark. She has a blog under the name Megan Lindholm: http://www.meganlindholm.com/ and another for Robin Hobb: http://www.robinhobb.com/ They kind of complement each other. She travels all over the world from what I can see.
What I really do like best about her is that she doesn't have a million degrees from what I can see. For such an astute writer who is capable of drawing what seem to be a million threads together in wonderful and perceptive ways, this is heartening to see.
There really isn't much more about her around. I guess if you want to know her daily musings, go check out her blogs.
This is the 6th book in her overarching European Medieval Fantasy genre.
I'm not entirely sure how to review this one since it's the last part of a series. It continues the Liveship Trilogy based around the Vestrit family fortunes and also continues a much larger thread of the 'Realm of the Elderlings' series.
It pulls together the far-flung members of the family and various others to shape the future of a changing world.
Malta Vestrit is a stunning character in this whole series. A once petulant and selfish brat, she pulls herself together into a worldchanger and Elderling Queen.
This book, as the name intimates, is based around ships. Ships that talk and think and feel and we now know were once a protective cocoon-wood for serpents that were 'mutating' into dragons. These were wrongfully destroyed by ignorant traders and the ships in this book are only now realising all that they could have been if not for humans.
The main boat is Paragon. A fascinating character - we don't know at the beginning why he is such a conflicted, distressed, angry and tempestuous being. We discover that he took on the young Kennit's death twice and absorbed all his childish anger and hate so that he could go out into the world and become a man. So Paragon is holding onto Kennit's rage and also has to deal with the fact that he is made from two separate dragon cocoons so there are 3 personalities raging within him.
His loyal companion throughout is Amber - who we have good reason to believe is The Fool from the Farseer Trilogy in a new aspect. She is still searching for her own heritage but it becomes clear she has her own internal vision she must follow if the entire land is to survive as it should.
Althea and Brashen are on Paragon with others and still quest after Vivacia who was stolen by Kennit.
Kennit, Etta, Wintrow and others are on board Vivacia, who early on in the piece discovers her heritage and turns into bitch queen boat for a while.
There are some fascinating twists and turns in this book and I couldn't shut the hell up with my oohs and ahhs as I realised what had just happened and what it meant for this character and that.
Robin Hobb's characterisations are her prime strength. This does not mean that her plot, narration, scene writing, exposition, etc. are not also all first class. But her characters shine. You can see them, hear them, experience what they feel about two lines after you first meet them.
Even the ones who wear veils! I am in awe of how much venom I will feel for a character, how much admiration or suspicion she can invoke in me for the people within her pages. I LOVE that a character like Malta who was a total pain in the arse in the first book and most of the second, began to show a hint here, a hint there that she was not to be lightly dismissed. Sure enough, she turns into one of the strongest characters in the series.
Then there's the dragons and the serpents. I felt pity and sorrow for the serpents, amusement at the arrogance and majesty of the dragon. Their integration into the story from an initial point where I didn't know why they were there was fascinating.
So by the end of this book, the two main ships, Vivacia and Paragon have come to accept their own past and futures. Paragon has a new face. Kennit carks it without having to give reparation to Althea or any of the others he trod on, Malta and Rheyn are on their way to becoming scaly Elderlings, Wintrow is a possibly missed opportunity for Amber but he's a bit of a hunk now, thank the gods that Kyle died a crappy death. For about five seconds in this book I felt sorry for him, but good old RH reminded me just in time of what a despicable pig he was. Althea and Brashen are now richer than rich which means a lot for the Vestrits and Bingtown.
There are a myriad of dragon mysteries that still await upriver and Amber is about to head on down to the next trilogy (well, that's my guess).
The last 100 pages of this book rocked. They drew a myriad disparate and what seemed unrelated storylines together seamlessly.
I am completely impressed by these books. I'm giving Ship of Destiny 9/10. The only reason it's not 10 is because my friend told me she likes the next series even better, so my hopes are high.
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