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Book Review: Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb (Soldier Son Trilogy, book 3)
[Note: the Self-Sufficiency follow-up post is proving more work than I'd anticipated. Here instead is a book review]
It always seems like something of a waste to review the third book in a series, because rarely will a reader start with that book, and if said reader has already invested himself or herself in the first book or two of the series, then probably the decision about reading the final installment is pretty much decided. Still, by the end of a series, one can look back and give a sort of review of the whole and a recommendation about whether or not to start it. The long and short of it is that I'd happily recommend Robin Hobb's Soldier Son Trilogy.
Hobb has created an interesting world, a setting worthy of the epic fantasy she spins, though rather different from the typical fantasy milieu--rather than medievalism, we get something closer to the 18th or 19th century, technologically speaking (plus magic, of course, though no one "civilized" believes in such things). The trilogy follows one character, Nevare Burvelle, a Gernian caught in the middle between his own culture and that of the forest-dwelling hunter-gatherer Specks. His soul has literally been split with one personality loyal to each culture. Through most of the series, Nevare's Gernian self has been in control, but now that narrator becomes largely an observer of his other self controlling the body they've shared.
The dual conflicts between the two Nevares and the two cultures are both well drawn. As usual, Hobb's characterization is strong. She creates an interesting cast of characters who seem, in their limitations, quite real. The conflict is very real, seemingly insoluable even the intervention of strong magic, and perhaps impossible without it. The magic here is no withdeus ex machina, however: we've had a good idea throughout of what the magic can and cannot do. The difficulty of the problem is no small part of the interest here.
There were a few times where I felt like Hobb had forgotten something in the process of the writing (minor point, and minor spoiler: the Specks were traveling during the day, even though they were extremely sensitive to light--they were in a forest, but a point had been made earlier that it was a deciduous forest in winter, and hence they migrated to shadier places for the winter). One the cultural conflict has been resolved, there are some more personal loose ends to wrap up, and I thought that Hobb telegraphed those moves a bit more than I would have liked. Still, on the whole, this was a strong end to a strong trilogy.