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A review by lilcurious
Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
1.5
I loved the Farseer Trilogy, with Royal Assassin swiftly becoming part of my favorite books of all time, but in Assassin's Quest some things started to bother me, and I fear they continued into Ship of Magic, now with the aggravating factor that I'm far away from every character I care about.
Some of my complaints are: characters keep making out-of-character choices just to forward the plot; Hobb is awesome at making characters you hate, unfortunately I don't enjoy their actual characterization and find them to be silly and shallow; which relates to my dislike of Hobb's third person narration. Her villains act in a very compelling way, but I feel so underwhelmed every time we go into their thoughts, like our glimpse at Regal's mind in Assassin's Quest, which made me hate what she did with his character. Similarly, Kennit is so compelling whenever someone talks about him, but his pettiness when we are inside his mind is just so boring.
So yeah, my opinion is the same as everyone else who also dislikes this book: the characters are annoying and hard to root for, even the ones we are supposed to enjoy. Everyone is dumb and boring and keeps making choices that I find hard to understand (would just like to remind you I could always understand Fitz' decisions, so it's not like I'm super criterious, I just really couldn't understand where they were coming from), Wintrow being the absolute champion at this, but Althea following closely behind. The family drama maybe family dramed a bit too hard for me. Malta is the most annoying thirteen yo I've ever heard of. Kyle is so much a caricature of a misogynist it stops being angering and it's just annoying.
Also, I finally understand people hating the pacing and lack of plot in Hobb's books... This one dragged me to hell and back through that middle section.
Sorry this was such a negative and inarticulate review, but I spent a whole month reading this book I just don't care to think about it for any longer. That said, I'm still going to read the sequel because I loved Assassin's Apprentice and Royal Assassin way too much to give up hope so soon.
Some of my complaints are: characters keep making out-of-character choices just to forward the plot; Hobb is awesome at making characters you hate, unfortunately I don't enjoy their actual characterization and find them to be silly and shallow; which relates to my dislike of Hobb's third person narration. Her villains act in a very compelling way, but I feel so underwhelmed every time we go into their thoughts, like our glimpse at Regal's mind in Assassin's Quest, which made me hate what she did with his character. Similarly, Kennit is so compelling whenever someone talks about him, but his pettiness when we are inside his mind is just so boring.
So yeah, my opinion is the same as everyone else who also dislikes this book: the characters are annoying and hard to root for, even the ones we are supposed to enjoy. Everyone is dumb and boring and keeps making choices that I find hard to understand (would just like to remind you I could always understand Fitz' decisions, so it's not like I'm super criterious, I just really couldn't understand where they were coming from), Wintrow being the absolute champion at this, but Althea following closely behind. The family drama maybe family dramed a bit too hard for me. Malta is the most annoying thirteen yo I've ever heard of. Kyle is so much a caricature of a misogynist it stops being angering and it's just annoying.
Also, I finally understand people hating the pacing and lack of plot in Hobb's books... This one dragged me to hell and back through that middle section.
Sorry this was such a negative and inarticulate review, but I spent a whole month reading this book I just don't care to think about it for any longer. That said, I'm still going to read the sequel because I loved Assassin's Apprentice and Royal Assassin way too much to give up hope so soon.