Robin Hobb, Renegade's Magic
Nov. 1st, 2009 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienIt's November, and here's the first of my promised daily bookposts. I read this in July-August, with gaps for travel.
The final installment of the Soldier Son trilogy is a bit faster-moving and more interesting than the previous two volumes, but not enough so to redeem the series; I only bothered with it because I'm stubborn that way.
The interesting part of this novel lies in the peculiar games the author plays with viewpoint by splitting the protagonist's personality into two, vying for control of the same body, and the narrating half spends a lot of this book not in control. It makes for some very peculiar sentences; the problem is that the narrator has next to no agency in most of the story, which isn't very satisfying. We see a lot more of Speck society, with a few surprising revelations.
A happy ending of sorts is finally arranged, a little too neatly, for some version of the narrator whom his girlfriend seems prepared to accept as close enough to the original despite multiple transformations and recombinations.
I don't foresee ever mustering the enthusiasm to slog through all that again, so the whole trilogy is in the trade-in box.
The final installment of the Soldier Son trilogy is a bit faster-moving and more interesting than the previous two volumes, but not enough so to redeem the series; I only bothered with it because I'm stubborn that way.
The interesting part of this novel lies in the peculiar games the author plays with viewpoint by splitting the protagonist's personality into two, vying for control of the same body, and the narrating half spends a lot of this book not in control. It makes for some very peculiar sentences; the problem is that the narrator has next to no agency in most of the story, which isn't very satisfying. We see a lot more of Speck society, with a few surprising revelations.
A happy ending of sorts is finally arranged, a little too neatly, for some version of the narrator whom his girlfriend seems prepared to accept as close enough to the original despite multiple transformations and recombinations.
I don't foresee ever mustering the enthusiasm to slog through all that again, so the whole trilogy is in the trade-in box.
