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Orson Scott Card reviews the Soldier Son Trilogy

Orson Scott Card reviews Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son Trilogy under a post entitled Dance, Found and Renegade’s Magic, posted on the 21st of August 2008.

Robin Hobb is one of the best fantasy writers ever. Writing as Megan Lindholm, she created one of the best urban fantasies ever: Wizard of the Pigeons. Since then, her interconnected Farseer, Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies broke new ground for inventiveness, intelligence, passion and realism.

For years I recommended her “Ship” books (Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny) to beginning fantasy writers as an example of how to create truly original magic universes with strong characters and gripping storylines.

After nine books that take place in the same fantasy world, it was exciting to see her begin something completely new with her Soldier Son trilogy. Shaman’s Crossing began with a fascinating human kingdom in which noble sons were locked into their life’s work by birth order alone. First sons were the heir; second sons were soldiers in the king’s service.

The hero, Nevare Burvelle, is a second son, and when he goes off to train for the king’s service, it seems to be a predictable – though very well done – bildungsroman of military academy life.

Wrong. Instead, it quickly morphs into a conflict between the humans of this world and the strange magic of the people of the forest. Nevare, exploited by an untrustworthy teacher his father found for him, finds himself trapped in a vast game of the gods. His soul is split in two, one of them a magical self that has no concern for human society, the other his “real” self, the one who yearns for a normal life.

There are two problems with this trilogy. First, the magic is so strange that it’s very hard to grasp the rules of it, to understand how this world works. So much of the book takes place in unreal or semireal settings that it can be confusing and difficult just to understand what is actually happening. It doesn’t help that our viewpoint character has no clue, either.

The second problem is that Nevare is so manipulated and controlled, his life becomes so desperately bleak, that it feels, in the midst of the second book, as if he has been pounded into nothingness. Halfway through the second volume (Forest Mage) I started skimming, because reading it was becoming almost unbearable.

By the end, there was simply nothing left. As a reader, I despaired. I hated what he was becoming; I saw nothing intriguing about the selfish, detestable characters from the magical universe; he was cut off from everything that gave his life meaning, and also from everything that gave the story meaning to me.

I was done with it. Hobb was still a terrific writer, but I’m getting too old to find much of interest in the fiction of despair.

And yet … such is my trust in Hobb that when the final book in the Soldier Son Trilogy appeared (Renegade’s Magic), I bought it immediately.

But I didn’t read it.

I kept putting it off, because the world of the story had become so bleak that I truly did not want to go back and live there.

Here’s the good news: From the first page, things get better. The world is not so bleak. Awful things still happen, but at last we’re getting answers, clarifications, meanings. The forest people become characters and their society starts to make sense. Above all, I can promise you that Nevare gets his life back – not without loss, but the despair of book 2 is not the dominant theme any more.

This is why I often read the end of a book long before I get there – to find out if I can stand to read the rest. I don’t need “happy endings,” but I need meaningful ones. The story has to accomplish something.

So I can promise you that this story does accomplish something.

And now the bleakness of book 2 becomes bearable in retrospect, because it really did lead somewhere. Once again, I can recommend this trilogy – and continue to recommend Robin Hobb as a model for other writers.

But to my writing students, I must also plead: In the middle books of trilogies, give us at least a scrap of hope.

Source: rhinotimes.com – http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-i-2008-08-21-183591.112113_Dance_Found_and_Renegades_Magic.html

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Posted: August 23rd, 2008
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