My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Usually I love Robin Hobb’s books, but there are so many things that annoyed me about this one. It’s entirely too long and repetitive. It could have been about 200 pages shorter. There are too many POVs flip-flopping all over the place in every chapter. I HATE it when a POV changes in the middle of a orscene! And there are about 10 or 11 different POV characters in the book. Too many!
My main problem with this book is that same as with the 2nd book in this trilogy… a female character is raped. Why is that ugliness necessary? It serves no important purpose in the plot that I can see, and it doesn’t propel the character development. It ruined my enjoyment of this book. So now there are three women characters in this series who have been raped, and several more women who have been threatened with it. That is sickening. I don’t want to read about it. And it makes me angry because what could have been a very good book is ruined, and I did not like the way that the subject was handled either.
That being said… I’m doubly disappointed because I love Robin Hobb’s writing. I love her characters. I am fascinated with the imaginative fantasy world, and the detailed and complex plots. When you love and enjoy a series like this, it’s even worse that the author ruins it with something nasty.
