Robin Hobb - The Liveship Traders Trilogy - Review

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Robin Hobb – The Liveship Traders trilogy


I’ve decided to review this trilogy in one setting. I still review them by the order of the books so that there can be no mistakes or accidental spoilers. The Liveship Traders is not the first trilogy in the world Robin Hobb created. The Farseer trilogy precedes this trilogy and I recommend to first read the Farseer Trilogy before tackling this one. Although there are very few links back to the previous trilogy, the links that are there can (if discovered) have quite an impact on how you perceive this trilogy. The Liveship traders trilogy reads completely different than Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy and is one of the reasons I give this book 4 out of 5 stars instead of 5.

The first major difference that stands out immediately is the writing style of this book. Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy is written in the first person perspective, which means that one person (in this case Fitzchivalry) kind of tells his story in the ‘I’ perspective. The Liveship trilogy is not written in the first person perspective which is quite a change. This time the story is perceived by multiple characters with their own views and feelings of their surroundings (quite similar to Martin’s aSoIaF). Second major point is the size of the book, which is approximately 900 pages for each book. I’m not one to complain about the amount of pages but especially in the first book when the story has not kicked off in high gear yet, it sometimes feels stretched. A very positive feature of this trilogy is the confined space the story is told in. The majority of the whole trilogy is situated either in one trader town (and in fact mostly in one house) or on one of the ships that are used to travel in this world. The amount of detail described in these places is enormous and a huge help to envision life on a ship, or a confined conventional trader’s home. This also leads to the best aspect of the books; the dialogue and especially the feelings of the main characters feel ‘real’ and in times almost modern.

Book I: Ship of Magic

In my opinion the first book is not as good as the two following ones. I realise that I had to get used to the different writing style in comparison of the Farseer Trilogy but some chapters of the book come to mind where I did not like the situation at all. The book starts with the introduction of the major characters in the series, which surprisingly turns out to be a ship. I shall not explain how this works, suffice to say that at one point of their voyages, Liveships actually become alive. The main problem for me with this book is the immature stage the characters are in at this moment and especially in the beginning it led to, me liking the wrong characters. Nonetheless the strengths I mentioned in the second paragraph easily outweigh these personal quirks.

Book II: The Mad Ship

In this book the story really kicks off and follows a much more exciting path than the previous book. Especially the characters are (again) the big strength here. Where in the previous books some of them were downright gut wrenching annoying here a ‘growth’ can be seen and it does the book so much good. The addition of a major character Liveship Paragon didn’t hurt either. At this point of the trilogy there are many questions unanswered and it kept me reading to find out. This book also leads to a very exciting conclusion that will change the world Hobb created forever. In fact this book is easily the best of the three and is certainly in par or/and in some aspects better than the books of the previous trilogy

Book III: Ship of Destiny

Ship of Destiny starts of somewhat slower than The Mad Ship but once going it goes really well. At this time in the trilogy the end is in sight and in one great convergence everything seemed to happen at once. The disadvantage of this convergence is that some parts of the book feel a bit empty in comparison of that part. Also the ending feels a bit tame but again I do this in comparison to the previous trilogy. Again though, the excellent writing style keeps the book in a good pace. I especially enjoyed the way Hobb handles the consequences of the things that happened in the second book. Overall a very good ending of an excellent trilogy.

 

If you're marking it down just because it has a different style than The Farseer Trilogy...

The most important thing to keep in mind when reading this is that it IS NOT the Farseer Trilogy - it's like comparing The Hobbit and LotR - sure, same world - entirely different style. Where The Farseer Trilogy is fast and seeks to get to the point, The Liveship Traders builts up slowly - I don't think one is really better than the other ... indeed, I think they're not directly comparable because they're so different.

 

It's not marked down in comparison to the Farseer Trilogy. I marked it down because I felt that the characters while all brilliantly displayed made to much 'good' change in a very short time span. It made the end tame and that's why I gave it 4 out of 5 stars, which IMO is still very high, it just means it's not a perfect Trilogy.

 

* some minor spoliers*

This was a huge problem for me - there was no character I could identify/sympathise with for the entire trilogy. Malta is easy enough to cheer for the in third book, but up to then she's a horrible spoilt brat. The change in her outlook happened in about 20 pages or so... far too sudden.

Also, Kennit. I found him quite likable initially, then quite pathetic and then ultimately irredeamable. Having said that, this trilogy is still damn site better than most...

BTW, I would recommend reading the Liveship books BEFORE the Farseer trilogy. If you read them in order you understand the link between the trilogies immediately... if you read them in reverse order, you have to wait until the end of the Farseer books to catch the connection.

 

Nice review, Apeman. It seems really interesting to me, considering I've been wanting to get started on some of Robin Hobb's books for a while now, so I may as well start here

 

Heh, I didnt get much of the connection until the Tawny man trilogy. I got some, perhaps the major bit but not the connections on the personal level.

 

I'm glad that I read the Farseer books first because I may have given up on Hobb otherwise. Now I'm going on to the Tawny Man series and so the two stories meld together...