December Talking #8

carawj said: Talk about a book of your choice that I made you read. ;D

This is an interesting question, and to be fair over the years Cara has made me read some individual books, but she's more likely to make me read epic sagas spanning thousands of pages and dozens of books... ;)

One of these was the Robin Hobb series that starts with Assassin's Apprentice and is still going on some thirteen (?) books later. All of the books are massively thick and hugely complicated, with multiple slow-moving interweaving plots, various different forms of magic that can be performed by different people, court intrigue, gossip and scandal, long passages of introspection, and surprising revelations.

It took me a while to get into them - Fitz, the narrator for the first trilogy, is a really interesting character, but at first it was tricky to plough through his pages and pages of grumping around being miserable about how hard his life is. (It IS pretty hard, to be fair, poor Fitz. <3) The world-building and the awesome side characters got me through, and now I adore Fitz, although I still find myself rolling my eyes at him a bit.

What I really love about Robin Hobb is the depth and thoughtfulness of her characterisation. She's created some of my favourite female characters of all time, and some of my favourite male characters too - and I know a writer is good when they actually make me care about dudes. ;) Every Robin Hobb character has layers and layers that gradually peel away over the course of the books until you - and usually they - discover who they really are. Almost every character you hate when you first meet them, you end up loving them at the end because you understand so perfectly what brought them to where they are. Characters who start out afraid, weak, childish and annoying learn and suffer (often horribly) and endure to become brave, strong, mature and loveable. And their paths are never predictable - Robin Hobb sets up a situation and then flips everything sideways so nothing happens the way you expect.

Basically they're awesome!