Renegade's Magic [May 5, 2018]

[Margret, Caladan Brood Face]

May 5th

[Laura]

Spot :)

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

Margret wrote: "May 5th"

Date updated to April 18th

[Laura]

Thanks Niki. 😘

[Shaitarn]

Just started! Marking my spot here.

[Laura]

I started yesterday night as I had to travel today and had no time for reading.

I'm at the beginning of Chapter 7 and to be frank, I find it a bit weird.
(view spoiler)[Now Nevare is a presence in the back of his head and Soldier Boy moves his body. That's creepy.
And Nevare himself, apart from Soldier Boy, also loves Tree Woman and for her sake he decides to take the side of the Specks. I don't really know what to think about that.

And why the hell didn't he just make an earthquake to break that road or simply used the magic to melt it down and push it back or something on that alley instead of asking plants and trees to die to cover it for a simple delay of a few months! That was sheer stupidity if you ask me.

I'm starting to resent Olikea also. The way she treats Nevare/Soldier Boy and her own child makes me wanna slap her at times. (hide spoiler)]

The story is different and I'm waiting to see if it becomes a good or a bad kind of different.

[Shaitarn]

I don't who we're supposed to feel for in this story: Nevare or Soldier Boy. I like Nevare (Soldier Boy I don't particularly; at least, not yet), so I hope he's going to take control of his body back. I think Nevare is trying to find a way to halt the progress of the road without killing anyone. I think he's right in that his people are never going to just give up and go away.

Olikea is coming across as a selfish, opportunistic little cow - at least to me! I think she's seized the chance to become the feeder to a great one because of the prestige attached to the role and doesn't give a damn about Nevare/Solider Boy as a person. I've come across similar characters before and I must confess I never liked them!

Chapter 7: (view spoiler)[ Epiny continues to impress me: "You lied to me, you nasty old magic tree woman, so I'm going to burn your tree down!" She's shaping up as my favourite character in this series (and I did smile when she smacked Nevare/Soldier Boy with the axe!)

Another thing I liked was the details of what Spink and Amzil with the aftereffects of Nevare's apparent 'death'. I don't like what's happening to them, but I'm glad Robin Hobb addressed it; I think a lot of writers would've had Nevare escape and never mention the people of Gettys ever again. (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 8: (view spoiler)[ I'm curious as to how the relationship between Jodoli and Nevare will work out - it seems that Great Ones are normally dire rivals, but I don't think Soldier Boy has the interest in such a rivalry, and certainly Nevare hasn't.

I quite like Likari. I wonder if he's going to become a sort of apprentice to Soldier Boy in the future; he's certainly a lot nicer than his mother! (hide spoiler)]

[Laura]

I agree with you on everything.

I also loved it that (view spoiler)[Amzil will know now that Nevare loves her. And I loved the way Epiny described the aftermath of Nevare's supposed death on Spink, Amzil and herself. And now it sort of makes sense why Nevare behaves irresponsible in certain cases. If your whole being/personality/soul would be split into 2 and only 1 half would be allowed to act at 1 time nothing is bound to turn out right. (hide spoiler)]

I don't know what to think about Soldier's Boy either. But I am curious to see how they will be able to work together because they will have to right? To find a solution that seems by all means impossible.

[Shaitarn]

Read a lot today thanks to a long bus ride, so here are my thoughts so far:

The Specks (about chapters 8 - 9)(view spoiler)[ Interesting; I had assumed that the specks were born with their markings as well, I didn't realise that they actually marked their children when they were babies. I was intrigued that they had different patterns that were preferred. I love these little glimpses we're getting of their culture. (hide spoiler)]

Night Terrors (I think about chapter 9 or 10; I can't find it right now) (view spoiler)[ I loved that little memory about his father forcing him to confront his night terrors - that little realisation at the end that his father had silently watched him (I guess ready to step in if the boy got really terrified) and praised him for his bravery afterwards - it was a nice little segment showing that once his father treated him with some gentleness (I honestly thought he would set the curtain alight with that poker or something). (hide spoiler)]

Lisana's lodge: (about chapters 11 - 12):(view spoiler)[ I was fascinated by the way the lodge was described, the lodge as it is now overlaid with Nevare's/Soldier Boy's memories of the place that they'd inherited from Lisana. It did make me wonder how long ago she lived - I mean, even with the sustenance the trees draw from the bodies of the Great Ones they must take a while to grow. That treasure horde was fascinating as it showed that Lisana had to make sacrifices for the magic too: she could never be a young woman to be courted and have a life of her own. And that fertility totem of the baby because she as desperate to have a child before it was too late just about broke my heart. (hide spoiler)]

The trading place (about chapters 12 - 14): (view spoiler)[ I loved reading about the trading place; I liked how Olikea took control and made decent bargains. I also thought it was sweet that she gave Likari a few beads to do some trading of his own - it's one of the few times she treated him like her child. I was kind of disturbed by the tabacco and the iron items for sale: I hope the specks aren't going to lose their own culture by adopting Gernian ways. (hide spoiler)]

The dance (chapter 16 - 17): (view spoiler)[ Oh no, that was terrible - those poor people dancing to their death! (hide spoiler)]

Dasie (chapter 17 onwards) (view spoiler)[ Wow! Okay, I didn't see that happening, although I suppose once I'd seen the iron blades at the trading place I should have done. Interesting how the Great Ones are so badly affected by iron - I wonder if Nevare will somehow turn that to his advantage, being able to pull free of Soldier Boy, perhaps. (hide spoiler)]

[Laura]

I finally caught up with you. You sure did read a lot of it in 1 day. :D And now you're probably still far ahead but I'll try to read some more also as I've just kept the kids to bed.

I was also surprised to see (view spoiler)[the spots were made. I was thinking the people were born like that. And the different patterns are fascinating.

I loved the way Soldier Boy is warming up to the little boy but even though Lisana was also described as a woman with shattered dreams, she will still be the ugly and mean Tree Woman to me. Despite the good that she did for Nevare as well as her own past I still can't warm up to her.

Those dancers were ... OMG I have no words! How horrible it would be to dance your life away in fear!

I also loved the memory of the father and facing fears. And afterwards when Nevare dream walked, seeing the father so wretched and asking Nevare why he didn't fight to stay back and why he simply gave up and went away without ever turning back - it made me feel sorry for him.

I was a bit scared that Epiny may be hurt in the forest and I'm glad Nevare can speak with her now somehow.
I wonder also why Amzil drove him out of her dreams crying. Could it be that she unconsciously dreams about him very often? (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 18
Oh no! I didn't see that coming! (view spoiler)[Soldier Boy turning traitor in such a way and boxing Nevare? I wonder if he'll ever be able to get his body back?! Perhaps he could gift the Old God Soldier Boy's life. Then he would be without magic and have his old body back. (*now that was just wishful thinking*)

I hope the little boy won't be chosen for the dance now that Soldier Boy has allowed the summoning to be made. (hide spoiler)]

[Shaitarn]

Just to warn you that I might not get much reading done in the next few days as we have a friend coming to stay and I'll probably have to do the 'social' thing. I'll try to read a couple of chapters and leave comments, but don't worry if I go a little quiet - I'm giving up on this one!

[Laura]

phew! That'a actually good to hear. :D
I was struggling to keep your pace yesterday cause I'm caught up with 3 bigger books open. And the problem is all 3 of them are good!!! 😁😁

Have fun with the 'social' thing. :)

[Laura]

Finished chapter 24 and don't know how much more of this I can take.
Everything is so bleak and hopeless! And no hope at all in sight!
(view spoiler)[Epiny was taking laudanum and so was everyone else except Spink! And the baby is so frail and may not love through the winter! And Yaril was pinning live fish to the wall! Nevare's father didn't send Nevare off because he hated him but because the magic made him do it! That was so below the belt and I hated it.
Then Spink saw Soldier's Boy leading the Speck attack and now he thinks Nevare betrayed him! And things are looking so bleak for everyone in Gettys!

And don't even let me start on criticising Soldier's Boy! He managed to get Likari trapped in the dance (cause I am sure Kinove took him just to get at Soldier's Boy) and killed so many people both Gernians and Specks and at the same time rendered the Dance useless! That was so very stupid and careless and horrible of him!
And now he gets what he deserves because everyone considers him useless and even despises him! Not even the Specks want to have him anymore and it serves him right.

I felt so sorry for Olikea after Likari went off. She isn't such a bad woman and mother after all. To see her broken like that just about broke my heart.

I do hope Soldier's Boy will manage to get Likari back and I don't know why but I have a feeling everything Nevare and Soldier's Boy did in the last months was useless. I think the way to stop the Gernians from building the road lies in the book and stone that Nevare left behind. Perhaps the book will reach the queen and she will have everything stopped. But I am intrigued about the stone and what it may do. (hide spoiler)]

[Shaitarn]

I finally finished - I managed to get quite a bit of reading done, just no posting!

I don't even know what to put - I feel emotionally wiped out again! I thought Fitz had it hard, but honestly he was on Easy Street compared to poor Nevare! (That reminds me: have you read the final Fitz trilogy? It's the only one I've yet to read - if you have read it, what did you think?)

I see from the review you've finished as well, so I hope you don't mind if I just put a jumble of thoughts down rather than sorting them into proper chapter order.

Soldier Boy: (view spoiler)[ On the final balance, I really don't like Soldier Boy - the time he 'boxed' Nevare and the time he cut him off from his thoughts and senses disturbed me (imagine how terrifying that would be, to be a prisoner in your own body). And after trying to wipe out Gettys he still asked Nevare to join back with him, probably committing suicide without offering any compromise in return! I don't blame Nevare for being so dead against it. I'm still intrigued though about the idea that they were split in two emotionally and Nevare got all the empathy and Soldier Boy had none so perhaps that's why they were the way they are.

And that scene when Nevare was 'dead' so they put him up against the tree and left him so the tree could take him - eewww! His 'rebirth' was interesting and I'm glad that happened I suppose. I quite liked the Specks reaction, labelling him a ghost (sort of reminded me of the Clan of the Cave Bear where the main character is 'dead' and everyone ignores her). To be honest, this book was so grim I wondered for a moment if Nevare actually was a ghost! (hide spoiler)]

Epiny & Spink(view spoiler)[ I love these two! I especially love Epiny (although I wanted to howl when Nevare dreamwalked to warn her about the attack and she was dosed up with laudanum!) and I'm glad she managed to get through, mostly with her spirit intact.
And Spink - Nevare is so lucky to have a friend like him! That unshakeable trust he had in Nevare, even after he'd apparently seen him lead an attack against the town - I just loved it. I thought they were both brilliant characters and well-suited to each other. (hide spoiler)]

Lisana(view spoiler)[ That bit near the end, when Tree Woman was sending roots into the prison to try and catch/kill Nevare and Amzil, totally destroyed any sympathy I might have once had for her. I was thinking 'you've had what you wanted; leave him alone, let him have one part of his life back!' At the point I was almost wishing someone had taken an axe to her tree! Nope - that was selfish and unnecessarily cruel. She has Soldier Boy and to be honest they deserve each other! (hide spoiler)]

Magic(view spoiler)[I hate the magic in this series - I hate it like I normally hate a character! I hated the way it viciously twisted everyone's life to get what it wanted, without caring what it destroyed on the way - the way it even ruined Nevare's relationship with his father to force Nevare out - that was just mean! Maybe we're meant to think it's just a force that has no idea of right or wrong, anymore than a hurricane would realise that destroying a house would be 'wrong' but as you said it just seemed underhanded. (hide spoiler)]

The ending(view spoiler)[ So what do you think of the end? I was glad Nevare had his happy ending (because he certainly deserved it after all he went through) but I didn't really like the way it was done. It just seemed in the end that everything Nevare went through was for nothing - the Queen decided to stop the work on the road, they found gold (see, you were right about that stone!) and - bang, it's all fixed! I know that without that journal the Queen wouldn't have been moved but wasn't all of this book pretty much a waste? It's acceptable and maybe it's just about the only way this book could've been ended happily, but it didn't really satisfy me.

I'm glad Nevare is happy with Amzil and I hope he can rebuild his relationship with his family (and perhaps get a cut of the money his aunt's making from serialising his adventures!). (hide spoiler)]

I'm going to give this 4 stars. Robin Hobb is a great writer, but I didn't like this as much as I love her Elderling books.

[Laura]

I'll move off to the comp in half an hour and chexk your spoilers also. My and my kid are making a huge lego camper van that is actually for 16+ but he insists on making it even if he's only 8. So I'm providing a bit of support. :D

I was thinking of reading the last trilogy of Fitz next month. would you like to read that with me also? I enjoy the BRs with you a lot.

[Laura]

Finished with the camper. So now I can get back to my books. :)

I didn't like Soldier's Boy either and I do believe now that he had the worst qualities of Nevare. And Lisana, I couldn't stand her from the beginning - so the 2 absolutely deserve each other.

That scene you mentioned was gruesome but I felt like throwing up when the crows came. That whole chapter was horrible.

And the end - I loved it, though I wish Hobb would have added a few pages extra.
(view spoiler)[It was like turning into a full circle. Everything ending where it began.

I didn't see it as completely useless - it was pretty obvious to me from the time Soldier's boy kept telling he gave the stone and wrote into the book that that was the way the magic wanted Nevare to help.
Everything Soldier Boy did as a Speck, including the killing was useless though. And it was a bit too drawn out. Too much of suffering.
And in the end the book and the stone both failed because Nevare didn't do things properly - which is good for his family and future in the end but the sheer amount of misfortune and bad luck was waaay to much for me!

As I said, I loved the end. The way Nevare healed his father's mind by taking away the magic that was making him sick and the way he gave Yaril the information about the stone was great. I loved the way Epiny and Yaril both pulled on him to keep in touch and that he found love with Amzil.

And yes, both Epiny and Spink were amazing!

But I'm a sucker for family relationship and in the end, that sentence Nevare's ill father wrote on a paper in the parcel he received: 'Son, please come home' had me undone. And I was wishing Hobb would have added a few more pages showing Nevare's return and his meeting with his father.

I didn't like this book as much as the other 2 and I would have rated it a 3 had it not been for that end. This way I gave it a 4. Because it was a great end. (hide spoiler)]

[Shaitarn]

Do you think that if Nevare had given the stone over for analysis earlier it would have solved all the problems of the road a lot sooner (because why bother building a road on the off-chance of success when you can dig up guaranteed gold?) - I wonder if that was always what the magic wanted and Lisana screwed up by dividing Nevare and Soldier Boy?

Perhaps the magic was pushing for both elements of the solution (the gold and the queen being so fascinated by the specks she banned the cutting down of the trees) to ensure the survival of the speck people.

I would've liked to have seen Nevare's reunion with his father as well - I wonder if his insistence that his son would return in glory is how he really felt about Nevare once he was no longer influenced by the magic.

I have 4 BRs next month (6th, 10th, 20th, 22nd) but at least two of them are going to be fairly quick little reads, I think so perhaps we could try to read Robin Hobb at the beginning, middle and end of the month? (Fitz and the Fool is a series I would find it really hard to stretch out to one a month - I always want to binge read her Elderlings books, one straight after the other!)

[Laura]

That was exactly what I was thinking about the stone. And perhaps if Nevare had been whole he would have pushed sending that book to the queen despite ruining his family name over it and the magic's purpose would have been done a lot sooner.

In a way I like it that the worst of Nevare's qualities (like ruthelessnes and violence) remained with Soldier Boy. The parts of Nevare left back make a much better person this way.

With Fitz and the Fool, even I would like to finish all 3 of them in one month. Couldn't wait 1 month between them either. :)
But I have 2 big BRs on the 15th and 18th (Wurts and Malazan) and another 3 combined at the end of the month starting with 26th (Goodkind, Abercrombie and Mieville). The rest are fairly small reads and I can adjust but I'd like to schedule Hobb around these big ones.

Fot me it would be perfect if we could finish the first 2 books before the 15th and start the last one say around the 24th. would that be ok with you? I am also reading Wizard of Earthsea with you on the 22nd but that is a small book and perhaps we can adjust.

[Shaitarn]

That sounds good to me. How about we ask for dates of say 1st - 8th May for Fool's Assassin, 8th - 15th for Fool's Quest and 24th - 1st June for Assassin's Fate? We can always start a day or two earlier or finish a day or two later individually so long as we read the bulk of the book at the same time!

I'm sort of nervous and excited at the idea of reading these books - in some ways I don't want Fitz's story to end!

[Laura]

Sounds good. And even I don't really want Fitz's story to end. :(
For the first book I'll be able to start only on the 2nd or 3rd because I still have to finish my open books plus Temple of the Winds by Goodkind. Is that ok with you?

In between I'll ask for threads for the books the way you suggested.

[Shaitarn]

That would be fine; I doubt I'll be starting bang on the 1st either!