Trigger warning: an incoherent reflection. No explicit spoilers, though
I had fears about this trilogy. I remembered enough that in the books on Fitz Farseer by this author, there was too much of heavy-handed moralising and of somewhat simplified intrigue. So I approached this new trilogy unsure about what to expect.
And it was almost excellent on literally every level, from politics to psychology, from style to narration. Its complex approach to private life, to gaslighting, to class tensions, to rape culture, to feminity, was so convincing that I couldn’t believe —almost—that the same author has written it. Six Duchies was like a realm pretending to be out of a fairy tale. Bingtown and Pirate Isles from this trilogy are, at last, like real world. There are gritty elements, there are terryfying ones, but there are also real wonders. There are so many miraculous things and well thought-out concepts in this trilogy that I don’t even know with which of them I should begin.
I really have a feeling that it is as if Robin Hobb hadn’t written it, not the same who wrote the nine books on the Farseers. There are women here preferrying free love and they aren’t defined by their sexuality. There are women terribly hurt who aren’t blamed for the assaults they struggled with. There’s a shallow girl who ends up as a sensible character, and she is neither punished nor intended to be disliked by the reader. There are people choosing an informal commitment instead of marriage. There are sex workers whose life is shown in a complex and believable way. So… Is this really a trilogy by the author who created such characters as Starling, a Bad Bitch who was war-rape’s victim at once? Who created a duchess who got any wiser because she’d been mansplained by Fitz? Can’t. Believe. It. Or maybe I should note that Fitz’s perspective, is after all, only Fitz’s perspective? There are other, more complex voices in the Realm of the Elderlings. And I’m so happy I could listen to them.
Liveship Traders trilogy has all the Farseer books lacked—an intricate plot with grey characters of rulers and envoys, a bigger plan behind the action shown in a concise way, and very accurate social reflections. The latter ones tend to be bitterly truthful—as when the rape culture and disbelieving the victims is analyzed. But they can also be inspiring, especially when we observe the solidarity between women, between women who are relatives, friends and allies. It is not always ideal but it is convincing, believable, and paradoxical. In this trilogy, it is no surprise that a woman keen on keeping to the social convenience is a good and independent manager at once. It is also not surprise that a supposedly powerful envoy is very frail with her hidden trauma, or that a sheltered housewife learns the taste of independence and grows to cherish it. Because we aren’t ideologies but people who try to make the best of our life, and the same applies to the men presented in this book series. A ruthless pirate does good things to gain influence, and he does something terrible too, driven by his own trauma. There is also a guy who acts patronizing with one of the main characters but who learns to respect female independence through the course of dramatic events affecting the Traders’ community. So, no villain—because one can change one’s attitude and behaviour, and this belief stretches over other characters of the trilogy as well, leaving an optimistic message.
The change and its intricate patterns are an important theme here, anyway. Class relations change, interpersonal relations change, the very dynamics of the ecosystem change—this one with the awakening of the dragons. You can see a bigger, profound scheme to it, something encompassing the whole depicted world. That’s the thing which books on Six Duchies lacked to my mind. And, honestly, except for Heliconia by Brian Aldiss, I haven’t read a set of works in which political and ecological changes merge into one Great History. It has only reassured me that the less Six Duchies, the merrier, and the more dragons, the better.
Everything in this trilogy is just so exquisitely complex. Characters do change. Love life is complicated and simply human. Sexual attraction has many layers, from thwarted to joyous parts. One’s views are the effect of one’s situation, status, upbringing. Social tensions have many causes and even if there is an inspirational message about cooperation and acceptation, there’s no easy answer.
Also, there are very interesting parallels in this trilogy. Sometimes it’s like a progressive retelling of Gone with the Wind. As much as Mitchell’s book, it’s about women and their experience. But it is colour-blind, strongly anti-slavery, and debunking the myths of rape culture. It’s also very different from ASoIaF. The world Hobb describes is brutal sometimes, and women are struggling with patriarchy, but neither of that is fetishized. Safe spaces and places where one’s freedom can be explored are marked more than in Martin’s book, and literally no female character is sexualized the way Cersei or Melisandre are.
Still, there are aspects which a reader wouldn’t understand without references to other books in Hobb’s universe. If you don’t know the Farseer books, for example, you won’t make out that one of the Liveship Traders character is a queer person. On the other hand, when you compare the egalitarian image of Six Duchies with the actual situation described in Fitz’s story… Well, it’s too optimistic. I’m aware enough that contrary to Hobb’s narration, Six Duchies isn’t a place where women are always safe and respected, and the only treat to their independence comes from the outer space. Nevertheless, it’s always good to see the Realms of the Elderlings taking a different angle, to see how unique the prose and the worldbuilding is.
Because Hobb is good not only at first person-narration but in writing PoVs too; she is actually far better at it than George R. R. Martin. If it was her, able to make every voice unique, who’d written ASoIaF… Just imagine.
With a very vivid style, the world easy to depict in your head can only follow. And what is interesting in Liveship Traders’s descriptions is that they have many meanings and layers. For example, from Farseer books I was afraid that the land of Jamaillia is your stock Orientalist Realm in this universe. In Liveship Traders, though, we see Jamaillia not as an Unknown and exotized, but as the motherland, the metropoly, the place of origins of our characters. I don’t need to add that such a perspective is refreshing, the way Wide Sargasso Sea turns the dychotomy of Known and Unknown on its head. And there aren’t many fantasy universes from which you can draw such hope; that a different point of view is enough to challenge the stereotype.
Still, there is a culture in the Realm of the Elderlings to which Hobb doesn’t do justice—Chalced. I mean, how many times can we see that there are only bad aspects to their society, only slavery and misogyny? How many times characters from this land prove to be just villains or freaks, or both? Also, it’s quite easy and safe to make the Chalcedeans olive-skinned blondes with blue eyes. Because then, nobody will accuse you of encorporating Orientalist stereotypes.
Nevertheless, there are so many good points to this trilogy that the biases and small inconsistencies of the depicted world do not count.
Especially characters is its attitude. People inhabiting Bingtown and Pirate Isles are quite a departure from the Farseer books folk. Women and girls are perfectly fleshed out. Guys, unlike Fitz, aren’t self-whining but it doesn’t mean that they don’t have their own troubles. There are also many person defying traditional gender roles—sensitive and kind-hearted boys who prefer to be priests and not sailors, young women struggling with social conventions… And none of those tropes is poorly drawn or depicted in a heavy-handed way.
One may note that there are not only petty biases to the way the Realms of the Elderlings are depicted, but that the universe of Liveship Traders is not comparable to our world too. To my mind, though, this isn’t necessarily a drawback. In the trilogy, there are elements evoking Early Modern Period, eighteenth century and even nineteenth century alike, but all this is concise on the level of its inner logic. The world depicted in the books doesn’t need to be paralleled to ours precisely, really. It’s convincing, it’s vivid, it’s brimming with colours and sensations, with the blue of the sea and of dragon scales, and with the lush green of mysterious Rain Wilds.
As a fantasy reader, I can’t ask for more.
Left Hand of Fiction 