Sooner or later, there is war with Chalced

Continuing my Geekology of Series:

The Liveship Traders is the middle trilogy of a trilogy of trilogies by Robin Hobb... although with the recent publication of Dragon Keeper, that definition looks set to change, which is a shame, because I like the recursivity of the definition.

Anyway, the titular Liveship Traders are families who own sailing ships made from 'wizardwood', wood with magical properties - albeit properties that lie dormant for three generations of captain. These ships are called Liveships, although it transpires through the tale that the ships' owners don't actually know what wizardwood actually is.

Unlike the prequel and sequel trilogies, which are concerned with FitzChivalry Farseer in the Kindom of the Six Duchies, and told solely from his point of view, Liveships embraces a much wider cast of characters, and a corresponding wealth of viewpoints. And although there are some (not many), references to the Assassin books, Liveships can be read as a freestanding trilogy (if you follow).

Robin Hobb has built a fantastically deep world within which to place her characters, and given rein to employ a variety of viewpoints, we get a much richer set of characterisations in this book (IMHO). There's Althea, the daughter of the family that owns Vivacia, but who, rather than ascending to captaincy of her ship, as she'd expected, ends up being shunted sideways and out. So we follow her as she attempts to reclaim what she believes is rightly hers.

There's her spoilt brat of a sister Malta, who goes through quite an epic transformation of her own. Wintrow, their brother, has taken holy orders, but is pressganged into service on Vivacia because the ship needs family blood on board.

There's the Pirate King Kennett, and the rather enigmatic Reyn who lives in the Rain Wilds, from where the wizardwood's actually harvested. I've mentioned before that I think Hobb's take, in particular, on second-hand magic is excellent: the characters here are employing magical items that they know not the provenance of, and as you might expected, unexpected consequences come home to roost.

I should also mention that we have this rather bizarre (at first) sea-serpent point of view, but as the tale progresses, it soon becomes apparent that this is not quite so random as you might first think.