I'm not sure if this book is a great improvement of the first one in the series, or if the characters simply grew on me. To be honest, this book was again a tad too slow-paced for me. It only became interesting in the final quarter or so. Most of the book is literally a slow, muddy slog of dragons and keepers working out their problems, differences, hormones, etc. I honestly think that this and Dragon Keeper could easily have been shortened into one book of max 500 pages. 

What's to like though, is the strong character development, with Robin Hobb time and again excels at. It's honestly insane how much her characters develop. I also enjoyed that this book was a lot queerer than any of the other books in her series so far, making this whole universe a tiny bit less old-school. 

Coming to this book after finishing The Tawny Man trilogy is harsh. It definitely lessened my enjoyment of this book, because honestly I just want to get through The Rain Wild Chronicles so I can start reading Fitz and the Fool.

Additionally vexing is that once again, this book is full of new characters. Why? I was very annoyed at this because why couldn't this story have been told with all the characters we know already from The Liveship Traders? I guess there are plenty of reasons, but my patience for new characters was at zero, especially since, as mentioned before, I just want to go back to Fitz and the Fool. Well, some characters from Liveship Traders make appearances, which is great, but they're only side characters that appear rather briefly.

But what about this book when looking at it outside of its context (if that is even possible)? I thought it was alright, but I have to admit I became more interested in reading once I saw a very spoilers, namely that there are LGBTQI+ characters here, and that the 3 main characters that all start out with their individual plot lines, eventually converge (and bond).

The main characters are Leftrin, Thymara and Alise. I hated Leftrin at first, but he became more interesting once he met Alise. Alise seems incredibly naive, reading her part was alright, but also a bit infuriating that she couldn't see what was really going on with that utter asshole Hest (and Sedric). Thymara is interesting as well, but I'm still waiting for interesting plot development on her.

The most interesting thing about this book is perhaps all the lore that we learn about dragons. This is, after all, something that the entire series has been working towards. It's a bit pitiful though to see that all the efforts of Ship of Destiny turned out as they turned out here. 

The book ends rather apruptly and was obviously just setting things up for the rest of the series. Well, we'll see where this goes...

This story finally comes full circle in this book. What began in the first trilogy (The Farseer Trilogy) was resolved in this trilogy (The Tawny Man) with a little help from aspects of the second, somewhat unrelated trilogy (The Liveship Traders). 

To summarize, in this ninth book of the series, which is the sixth book with Fitz as the protagonist, a lot of unanswered questions are finally answered, and the story of Fitz comes to a somewhat satisfying conclusion, after much, much heartbreak, of course (it wouldn't be a Robin Hobb book otherwise). The story dives deep into the relationship of Fitz and the Fool as we learn of the gruesome fate that he suffered. A lot of things happen, but in the end Fitz finally came back to himself and the analogies between Fitz and just bonds bring the book to a very interesting conclusion. I still really miss the animal aspects though. 

There are, of course, 7 more books in this series, and 3 more with Fitz. With such a great ending, I really wonder where the story will take him. But first, dragons...

The dualities of this book are manifold. It was fun to read, and I read it in record time. But what really actually happened in the plot? Why is the book called "The Golden Fool", when the Fool is barely the focus of 90% of the book? 

As I said, I really enjoyed reading it. It's just so well written and the characters are fun, as is slowly uncovering the mysteries of this universe. But I'm definitely disappointed by the lack of actual story progress regarding the titular character of both the book and the trilogy here. That is made even worse by

Fitz and the Fool having this silly fight, and then behaving like stupid teenagers half of the book. Instead of sitting down and having a serious, adult conversation, they are stonewalling each other, and are being cold, petty and just infuriatingly silly. I just want them to get over themselves and their stupid medieval ideas and be each other's beloved. It was fairly obvious to me that this was just a plot device to stall the plot and drag it out for what I assume will be the conclusion in book three of this trilogy. I hate it.

That's one of the reasons why this book is not a solid 5/5 for me. 

Another reason for me is the lack of animals. All of the books with Fitz really shined with his bond beasts, and I felt that these characters were really missing here. I understand why it's missing here, but it still altogether makes it feel like this book is not whole. Very much a second book experience focusing more on world-building than plot advancement.

Fitz is back! 💖 This book is set ~15 years after the Farseer Trilogy (and incorporates some minor details from the Liveship Traders as well). Fitz has been living in isolation, but soon his old life comes chasing him into a new adventure.

Reading this book was both wholesome and heartbreaking. It's soo good to see all the characters coming back together, it feels like coming home after a long, long time away. The Fool is back under yet another guise, and some of the other characters as well. Reluctantly, Fitz yet again does his duty, and goes through quite a bit of character development.

The heartbreaking part of this book is of course

Nighteyes and his steadily declining health. Having had dogs and watching them grow old, I can really feel how hard it is to go through that. Sadly, it's a big part of caring for an animal that all who are bonded to them must go through.

This book, similarly to the Farseer books, handles animals so well. Having grown up with animals, I love reading how all these animals in this book are not only animals, but characters, no matter if wolf, dog, cat or horse. I don't think I've ever seen it done so well in fiction. 

My only complaint with this book is that

Fitz should really have just told Dutiful what was going on earlier. I understand it's difficult because of the cat/woman, but it was a bit infuriating. My second complaint was that the ending felt a bit like a Deus Ex Machina, with people arriving in the right place at precisely the right time

. 

This book was such a pleasure to read (despite it's heartbreaking aspects) that I devoured it in a week. I'm looking forward to book 2 and 3 of this trilogy.

TW: sexual assault

The third and final book of The Liveship Traders (and the sixth book in the Realm of the Elderlings series), Ship of Destiny finally converges ALL the plotlines and characters that were painstakingly established in the previous two, 900-page tomes. I stand by my verdict that all of these books are too lengthy and verbose, and focus too much on drawn-out conversations. But was it worth it? YES.

A lot of things happened in this final book that left me in emotional turmoil. First and foremost, there are all the revelations of Kennit, a character that I hated with a passion from the first book. He's a narcissistic, manipulative psychopath, there's no nicer way to say it. This book shows us why exactly he is how he is, sometimes even trying to make us sympathize with him and his tragic backstory. But by the time he

rapes

one of the main characters, there's really no doubt left about him. The

rape

is shocking in more than one way, because I felt it comes with a lot of

gaslighting and victim blaming

. I just wanted to scream at all these characters to

please just believe and listen to survivors

! Lots of tough topics to chew through here.

One of the most interesting hints this book revealed relate to the character of Amber. The book heavily implies that she is

the Fool from the Farseer books

. While I'm trying to wrap my mind around that, I now seriously would like to re-read all 2700ish pages of these three books to see where that was coming from, and if there are more hints earlier on. Needless to say I'm excited to start reading The Tawny Man trilogy next.

Altogether, while I struggled a bit throughout the first 1-2 books of  The Liveship Traders, I'm beginning to see why people say this is even better than the Farseer books. I don't think it's necessarily better. I really loved the Farseer books for their medieval vibes and the animals bonds. They are just two very different series. The Liveship Traders is overwhelming with it's vast amount of POV characters at first, but ultimately they all have their important place in the larger plot, and the character development is insane. A slow but great series, and I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of these characters (since there are 10 more books in the Realm of the Elderlings). 

In this book, finally a lot of threads came together, but I still share some of the complaints that I had about the first book: It's too damn long. Too many drawn-out conversations especially. If this was streamlined into a book of 200-400 pages less, it would have been a riveting page turner. I still read it considerably fast for a 900 page book though. 

The conclusion though, was yet again mostly a setup for book 3. Now, on to book 3, and what I hope will be the convergence of all these plotlines.

After reading The Farseer Trilogy, which is the predecessor to this trilogy, I struggled a bit with my expectation of The Liveship Traders. This book feels very different, despite it being set in the same universe. 

What I struggled with most is the vast number of different POV characters (unlike in Farseer, where we only see the world from Fitz' perspective). In this book, there are about 10 or so POV characters of varying degrees of interestingness. I found some of them extremely tedious to read and often found myself speed-reading over those, especially if they dragged on. That is another issue I had with this book; there are a lot of scenes and conversation that go on and on and on with very, very little actual valuable content. 

Aside from these issues, the premise is certainly fascinating, and there are characters that I enjoyed reading about, in particular Althea, Winthrow and Vivacia. I feel that if the whole book was just Althea's or Vivacia's POV, and if it was condensed to 400-500 pages (instead of 880), it would have been absolutely brilliant. 

This book lives up to its name, because it's probably one of the most epic quests I've experienced. 860 pages of hardship that this poor protagonist had to go through, but it's so well-written that it never got boring. The worldbuilding is excellent and feels so real and alive, with some low- to medium-fantasy elements that if I had to, I'd describe as "Medieval Sense8 with animals". I especially love that animals play such a big role in these books, it's not something that I commonly see done well in novels.

Great trilogy, can highly recommend, and will definitely read all the other books in the Realm of the Elderlings.

I love this world. So well written and fleshed out and never boring. So realistic that it really makes me appreciate living in a world of heated blankets. What a gripping, infuriating story, I can't wait to learn how it ends in book three.