Nevare has the life he's always dreamed of lined up for him and ready to go. He's handsome and strong, he's in the academy to become an officer in the cavalry, he has a family that's proud of him and he has a beautiful young lady waiting to become his wife. But then, as this book, the second in a trilogy, opens, his entire life begins to slowly unravel and turn inside out. This is an interesting story filled with characters I could easily empathize with, but I think at over 700 dense pages it was just too long for its own good. Most of the action in this story takes place within Nevare's mind as battles of will power and trips into the dream world. It's a powerful cautionary tale of the evils of intolerance with a heart wrenching ending that makes me want to read the final book in this trilogy no matter how much slogging I had to do to get through the first two. If you didn't enjoy the first book in this trilogy, you probably won't enjoy this one either. This one is even slower but much deeper. ( )

I was disappointed in this book partly because my expectations of Robin Hobb are so high. Her characterisations are excellent, her plots full and thought provoking. She writes with a passion, and makes you think about your own assumptions and actions.

But in this book, Nevare Burvelle IS Fitzchivalry Farseer. The protaganists are so similar that it quite spoiled the book. Both are procrastinators. Bith are cursed with an unacceptable magic. Both are forced to break all ties with their family and end up being believed dead by the ones they love. Both share a similar morality. The list goes on. Robin Hobb has simply recreated a character that she lovingly brought to a conclusion once before.

I still enjoyed the book enough to read it and the next one. But this will not be one of my all time favourites - unlike her previous works. ( )

Although it takes a while to get there, I really enjoyed the development of the magic system and the initial peeks into the Speck society. The gorier moments also appealed to my horror-fan side.

Nevare's introspection and inertia features heavily in the second book of the Soldier Son trilogy.

I think the degree to which a reader will enjoy the book depends a lot on their ability or willingness to, for lack of a better term, inhabit the character: to sit inside Nevare's head and let him think/act as he will, without letting external preconceptions of what he should or shouldn't think or do. ( )

The awful thing about trilogies is having to read through to the end of the third book to discover what happens, but while I might skim the last chapter of the next book in a shop, I doubt I will buy it. Forest Mage was such a disappointment, given how much I enjoyed Hobbs' earlier Farseer books—I found this novel repetitive and pedestrian. I never found myself liking Nevare, and for a number of personal reasons, the constant remarks about his weight made for uncomfortable reading. I felt twitchy and discomfited for all seven hundred odd pages—about two hundred of which could have been discarded anyway, with no loss to the plot or the characterisation. Hobb does do some interesting things with colonisation and ethnocentrism, but a lack of subtlety weakens her writing, not to mention that it sometimes takes Nevare dozens of pages to figure out something that the reader has already taken as a given. ( )

I've gotta say, I'm hella disappointed.

This was a decent book. That's all. It wasn't breathtaking or engaging or mindblowing, or anything else that Hobb's books usually are. There were a few stunningly beautiful moments where I felt for Nevare with every fibre of my being... but they were too few, and there was far too much Other Stuff between them. In the end, this was just a book about a guy who had some magically-motivated problems.

Hobb opens with summary. Pages and pages of summary. We hear, once again, exactly what happened in Shaman's Crossing. Having finished the book the night before, I found this tedious. And then, just as things were starting to pick back up, Hobb shifted the tone completely. This was no longer the book I'd expected to read, and the transition was completely jarring. Nevare doesn't undergo a slow change; instead, his world flips upside down overnight, with minimal buildup. I didn't feel like it was handled well at all. It shook me straight out off the story and made it difficult to sink back in.

As was the case with the first book, I had trouble figuring out just what I should be rooting for here. Did I want Nevare to regain his former physique, get a swank commission and marry some vapid bimbo? Not really... but he wanted it so badly that I thought perhaps I was way off-base. Did I want him to give in to the magic and betray his country, then? Again, not really. I'd have been disappointed in either outcome I sort hoped he'd find a happy medium between the two, but I didn't really have enough invested in it - or in him - that I read on at a frantic pace, desperate to see how things would turn out.

Instead, I plodded along. I read perhaps ten pages over the weekend. I couldn't seem to read quickly once the next week came. I just wasn't engaged. With the exception of those few moments I mentioned above, I just couldn't care enough about Nevare to devote my time to this book. Even the world became considerably less engaging as Hobb moved away from the gorgeously depicted upper classes into a rather pedestrian poor sector and a sketchily described forest culture. Blah.

The book does have some good points, though. Nevare finally makes some progress on a personal level, and his ethnocentrism fades slowly and organically in response to his experiences on the frontier. The food writing is phenomenally good; it made me want to cook! I personally feel that romance is one of Hobb's weak points, but I do like how she dealt with the one herein. And there really are some beautifully realized scenes in which Nevare's whole world just crashes into the reader like a ton of bricks.

But in the end, that wasn't really enough to redeem the book. I can't say as I'm really looking forward to the next one now. I normally prefer to read Hobb's books back to back, but I'm just not sure if I can launch straight into Renegade's Magic. ( )