Ship of Destiny (Liveship Traders, #3) in Fantasy Buddy Reads

Oct 16, 2015 Hacen rated it liked it · review of another edition

Actual Rating: 3.75

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Jun 23, 2023 Kaila rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, pirates, boats, 2023, dragons, high-seas-adventure, fantasy-politics

I've only been so-so on the Liveship Traders trilogy. I thought this third book was building up to be something epic but not only did the ending leave me flat, rape is used as a plot device. AGAIN. I'm not going to spoiler this review, I think it's important for people to know this going into it. Althea is brutally raped and no one believes her. She spends the last two hundred pages of the book cowering in the corner because of this rape. We had a whole goddamn trilogy to get on her side, to wan I've only been so-so on the Liveship Traders trilogy. I thought this third book was building up to be something epic but not only did the ending leave me flat, rape is used as a plot device. AGAIN. I'm not going to spoiler this review, I think it's important for people to know this going into it. Althea is brutally raped and no one believes her. She spends the last two hundred pages of the book cowering in the corner because of this rape. We had a whole goddamn trilogy to get on her side, to want her ship back, to care about her quest, and then LOL NOPE we're just gonna rape her and make sure she's with a strong man at the end! YAY! Even better, let's give her rapist a hero's death! YAY AGAIN! EVERYONE LOVES HIM! What's a little bit of rape to a pirate amirite.

So yeah, that colored my enjoyment of, well, everything.

There are a lot of points of view in this book, but we know the characters well by now and it was never confusing. What was confusing was the vast amount of storylines that ended up not mattering. Reyn especially in this book, who I really wanted to like even though his whole character arc is MALTA I LOVE YOUUUU, has a storyline that doesn't matter. Why was he even there? It happened several times where there would be pages of dialogue/discussion, an agreement would be made, and then something would happen that negated all of that anyway, so like, what was the point? Once, fine, but it happened enough times that I noticed it and it just made the whole book feel kind of like a waste of time.

The ending battle disappointed me. Thinking back on the Farseer Trilogy, there were few battles we were actually present for. Much of it was the small battles between people. When all the threads finally come together here for a big last battle, I was working myself up to be excited at the epicness (despite said rape from earlier). But it fell flat for me. The battle didn't really work.

I'm going to keep reading the series. And I hope there is 1000% less rape than there was in this trilogy. ...more

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Sep 21, 2019 Nuvaira rated it it was amazing

What a ride

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Nov 21, 2010 John rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy

I finally managed to finish Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy. After finishing the first book, Ship of Magic, I recognized that this series had tons of potential. Unfortunately, I don't believe that it lived up to it. I think that the first two books in the series were well written and entertaining for the most part, though I never found myself falling in love with the story like some of Hobb's other works. Unfortunately, I lost interest in many of the characters and most of the story part o I finally managed to finish Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy. After finishing the first book, Ship of Magic, I recognized that this series had tons of potential. Unfortunately, I don't believe that it lived up to it. I think that the first two books in the series were well written and entertaining for the most part, though I never found myself falling in love with the story like some of Hobb's other works. Unfortunately, I lost interest in many of the characters and most of the story part of the way through the final book.

The maritime element puts this series in a unique position when compared to many other fantasy books and it certainly seemed like Robin Hobb had done her research, making it all the more convincing. Also, this series has a very strong and pervasive feminine element to it. This is not to say that there aren't any prominent male characters - like the fantastically written antihero Kennit. But, throughout the three novels, Hobb devotes a lot more time to female cast.

And it's quite the cast of female characters as well. We have the tomboy in the character of Althea Vestrit. We have Althea's niece, Malta, who begins the series as a spoiled adolescent but transforms into a responsible, thoughtful young adult. With Etta, we have a whore who also transformed and improved her life due to her deep love for Kennit. We have the wise and elderly head of the Vestrit household Ronica. There are other, less major female characters as well that still play an important role: Serilla, Ronica and Keffria. Finally, we have Vivacia and Tintaglia who explore femininity without the burden of humanity.

Now, what lessened my love for this series towards the end...

Nothing about the third book was particularly bad. Parts of it were immensely entertaining in fact. My biggest gripe with the book is that nothing was unexpected or surprising. The big reveal explaining the connection between the serpents/live ships/rain wilders was pretty obvious to me a long time before it happened. I also found that I stopped liking the characters towards the end. I realized that some of them were just passive and boring characters that ended up with rewarding outcomes by making internal transitions that didn't seem entirely justified to me. Thankfully, Hobb juggles a lot of different character's perspectives so it normally wasn't too long until I got back to a character I like.

There was also a new political side to the book involving Serilla and Jamaillia's relations to Bingtown that I felt was poorly explained and ultimately didn't contribute much to the story. I don't want to call it filler, because I bet many did enjoy the new dynamic that plot brought to the overall story, but I just found it to be unimportant and think it slowed down the more interesting plot elements.

My final complaint is that the ending of the series was quite mediocre. All of the sudden a whole realm full of war and chaos is peaceful and pretty much all the characters have "happily ever after" endings. Everything is neatly wrapped up in the last 100 or so pages but many of the details that most interested me are glossed over completely.
...more

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