[challenge-overview]

Progress:  Ship of Destiny 17% complete

So, onto book two of my Realm of the Elderlings reading challenge, Ship of Destiny.  Ship of Destiny is the third in the Liveship Traders trilogy. I chose not to include the first two, Ship of Magic and Mad Ship in my reread for two reasons. One was time constraint to meet my deadline, the second is that I had dipped into the trilogy fairly recently (fairly recently being about 18 months ago).  I did a quick Wikipedia lookup to bring myself up to speed.

So, a few thoughts.

Whispersync for Voice, welcome back!  YAY!  I didn’t realise how much I missed it when I didn’t have it for Assassin’s Quest.  Sadly, I see it’s also missing from The Tawny Man.  Ah well.

I miss Fitz and the Fool.  We do get to see the Fool’s alter ego, Amber and my heart just about broke when she mentioned the slave pin that had been given to her by her true love.  I’m not certain at which point we are supposed to realise that Amber is the Fool, but once you know she is, it’s hard to avoid picking up these little hints. I’m shipping Fitz and the Fool so hard right now.  I’ve forgotten how they left things at the end of Fool’s Fate, but I’m hoping they’ll get together in the new trilogy.  That could be a very interesting romantic relationship for Hobb to explore.

Anyway, I digress from the Liveship Traders.  After three books of male protagonists, it was a refreshing change to see strong women characters come to the fore, notably Ronica and Malta.  If I remember Malta from Ship of Dreams this shows some real character development.  I enjoyed that their strength of character was contrasted with that of the Satrap’s Companion, Serilla.  Hobb’s skill as a writer were shown in how well Serilla’s actions and motivations are relatable, even though they are working against one of our protagonists.

The whole Bingtown Trader politics confused me, but that’s probably my own fault for not rereading the first two books first!

The whole prologue with She Who Remembers didn’t do much for me.  However if I remember correctly, it’s one of the pivotal points of the series.  Sigh.

That’s all for today.  I’ll be back tomorrow with more updates.