I’ve just finished reading Renegade’s Magic, the final book of Robin Hobb’s Soldier’s Son trilogy. I found it somewhat disappointing. As with some of her other books (final of the Assassin trilogy as well), Hobb has the main character too much a spectator to events. Well, that’s not true: Navarre spends a lot of the book as being the main protagonist of all the events, but with no idea what he should do and no idea why he does things. It makes for a frustrating read.

So, when you get to the end of the book, you’re thinking, “What was that? Why did that happen? Did we need all those words just to get to this point?”

It’s not a patch on her Liveship Traders series, which had characters acting for goals that they had some clue about, even if the consequences weren’t always anticipated.