Living Ships? (Ship of Magic - Robin Hobb)

Member Name: Ecolinda

Product:	Ship of Magic - Robin Hobb
Date:	12/01/01 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent writing, the "live ships" concept is very imaginative, great storyttelling

Disadvantages: Some people may find the action scenes slow reading

This is the first of Robin Hobb’s new trilogy “The Liveship Traders”. This series is based primarily in Bingtown rather than the Six Duchies of the previous Farseer Trilogy. However, the most facinating thing about this series is the liveships on which the trilogy bases its name.

The ships that the Trader families use, for which they mortgage their holdings and even risk their family members, retain the memories of the Trader family to which they belong and actually come to life when three generations of the family have died on their decks.

In this series we find more heroines than we did in The Farseer Trilogy, however, Robin Hobb does seem to write rather tortured female characters. There is Althea, the tomboy of the family; Etta who ‘loves too much’; Keffria, who is under-the-thumb of her nasty husband and Malta the brat of the family. Fortunately, Althea, an important character in the book is also extremely likeable.

We start off with Althea living aboard Ophelia, her father’s liveship. Unfortunately, when her father dies, the ship is not handed over to Althea (as he would have wished) but Keffria, the oldest daughter. Her husband, Kyle, takes over as captain of the ship and his abuses result in disaster. I will tell you no more than that for fear of spoiling the story for you.

We see this first book primarily through the eyes of Althea, Wintrow (Kyle’s ill-treated son), Brashen and Captain Kennit the pirate, with glimpses of the troubles at home provided by Ronica and Keffria. The story revolves around Althea’s attempts to gain her rightful inheritance of the liveship Ophelia. We also meet the mysterious Maulkin and his tangle whose role in the story become clearer in later books.

My favourite character – if character you can call him – is Paragon, the liveship who has become mad. We are introduced to him her, but he features much more in the
next book in the series “The Mad Ship”

To my mind this trilogy is even better than The Farseer Trilogy having some really unique and interesting elements. However, my husband found it extremely hard going as he considered there was not enough action the reasonably small number of action scenes were written in a matter of fact way which made them relatively unexciting. I did not feel that way. I think that if you get into the lives of the characters of this book you will like it. If you want more action, go for The Farseer Trilogy.

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