Review - The Liveship Traders Trilogy

I just finished rereading the Liveships trilogy, by Robin Hobb. There are some beautiful ideas in there -- about dragons, and the life cycle of a dragon -- and there are references to the Farseers trilogy that complete that story, that explain things. Yet it's also, for quite a few people I've spoken to, quite tedious to read. This time as I was going through, I tried to put into words why it's broken for me. Comparisons to the Farseers trilogy abound, as well as spoilers for both trilogies and probably for the Tawny Man trilogy as well. Some of this, I've already written elsewhere.

( Cut for length )

I've discussed a lot of ways the books could be more intriguing, with various people. More interesting characters, more of the interesting characters there already are -- starting in the Rain Wilds instead of taking so long to get there... I can see why it's written as it is, but with some tweaking to the plot to allow it to be written differently, I think these books could have been marvellous. I don't recommend reading them casually, but to fill out the details of the whole world in the Realm of the Elderlings cycle, I do recommend trying to push one's way through them. There are some lovely things in these books, but they're rather obscured, for me, by the things I've already mentioned.