I feel like books 3 and 4 should have been one book. Not sure why they split it up when book 3 of the Farseer Triology was massive compared to the others haha. But since I read them back to back it, the experience was essentially the same.
So book 3 definitely had obvious set-up for a lot of the climactic parts of book 4. For example, I definitely was expecting Phron and Selden to both be saved as well as Alise to be set free from her marriage. I wasn’t annoyed by that, since sometimes it’s nice to see things pan out nicely after meticulous set-up. But it still managed to surprise me in a couple of ways:
- I wasn’t expecting Tintaglia to ‘die’ and then be saved by Kalos doing ‘undragon’ things
- Obviously Hest was going to be taken out of the picture somehow, but I wasn’t expecting no one to know about his demise haha! That’s probably the worst outcome from his point of view.
- I wasn’t expecting Icefyre to join everyone at Kelsingra (and have a big ole whinge lol)
- Not seeing the Duke of Chalced’s demise from his point of view was a good move, but also a bit surprising given how often they showed other things from his point of view.
It was nice to see Thymara stand up to Tellator. As well as Sedric and Alise presenting a united front against Hest. And I liked how each of the dragons had very individual approaches to war and whether their riders would accompany them or not.
This whole series was very mature and thoughtful about relationships and I appreciated that. The part where Thymara tells Tats he’s just a downright good person was better than any love confession would have been. And I felt like Chassim’s opinion on forcing women was very appropriate and pointed.
The main disappointment of this book was the letters. I suppose since the Detozi/Erek romance was fulfilled it was just about the Bird Guild drama. And since the outcome was obvious, they weren’t that interesting to read.
I like how one of the main themes was being flexible and learning to live a different way without compromising what actually is meaningful. The way Kalos insisted on accompanying Tintaglia and Icefyre to protect the eggs and the way the dragons helped each other out was quite nice to read.
So having now completed two Fitz focused series and two Bingtown/Rain Wilds ones, Hobbs is a lot kinder to her characters in the Bingtown/Rain Wilds one haha. Both the Liveship Trilogy and the Rain Wild Chronicles ended up with happy endings for almost all the ‘good’ characters (although I do like how the optimistic endings of the Liveship series did end up not being realistic, thus causing some of the impetus for the Rain Wild Chronicles). It’s just kinda, poor Fitz 🤣 His endings may have some happy aspects but he also loses a lot more imo. I am looking forward to see if the final trilogy will fully meld the two storylines. It has been nice seeing events and references to people across the various series. I do wonder if the last trilogy will focus on the origins of the Farseer family. Because it seems like they know how to Skill and therefore work with Silver despite not being Elderlings 🤔 I won’t jukp straight into the last trilogy (I don’t own the last book yet), but I’ll try not to leave it too long between this one and the next, so that I hopefully won’t forget important plot points 😛
Categories: Book Reviews
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