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sometimesrosy · 5 years

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I’m putting my summer reading list together and was wondering if you had any good book recommendations. Any genre will do.

I should be better at this than I am, but I generally have a hard time keeping track of my favorites in my head and people able to recall them for when people ask me. Maybe I should keep a list of books to rec. Hey that’s kind of a good thing to put on my website. Why didn’t I ever think of that before? Then I wouldn’t have to remember it all the time and I’d also have a list of influences. I should seriously consider that. hmm

The only thing I can think of now is a book series that I recently picked up again after recommending it to a friend because I thought there was a romance in it that reminded me of Bellarke. So why don’t I do that one.

It’s called the Liveship Traders by Robin Hobb, and the first book is called Ship of Magic.

In my memory, I made the bellarke-like characters into the main characters, but when I went back over it, I realized that their story was one of multiple interwoven stories. I was in a bellarke mood, so I actually ended up doing a shipping kind of edit while I read and skipped through to all the chapters about the bellarke-like characters, so I ended up reading THEIR story. It got tricky at the end of the series when all the stories came together and I hadn’t caught up on the other characters… but I managed. Quite well. I’d never read these books this way, and because I was in a bellarke mood, I suddenly wondered if the reason why I resonated with Bellarke so strongly was actually because they reminded me of THIS couple.

Anyway, so now that I’ve recd a book based on shipping bellarke. The series is actually a fantasy. This series is about a family of shiptraders who own a living, magic ship. The daughter, Althea, wants to inherit the ship, but when her father dies, it goes to her brother in law instead, a man who is not one of them and doesn’t understand the strange burden of these ships. To save the family from bankruptcy, he turns to slave trading– a very bad mistake for a very sensitive ship. It tells the story not only of Althea, but also of her mother and sister and niece back in the trading town, and her nephew and ship. And pirates! LOTS OF PIRATES. And sea serpents. And a female character dressed as a man. And exotic riches. And a mysterious veiled people. And political plots. And people falling in love. And silly selfish girls growing up to be unstoppable. And the mystery of the dragons, who have gone from the world. Or have they?

This is set in the world of the Farseer books, Fitz and the Fool, (kings and queens, bastard princes, animal magic, high magic, magic zombies, betrayal, more dragons, a strange character who sometimes makes prophecies.) The first book of that is Assassin’s Apprentice.

All these books are interconnected and, in the end, about the fate of the dragons, and the prophecies that are trying to set the world back on the right track. There is a little bit of crossover between the trader books and the fitz books, but it’s subtle, and i don’t want to give it away. I can easily recommend starting with the Assassin books, as it’s one of my favorite series, and Fitz is a great character. So if you’d rather read about northern barbarian royalty in a political battle and the bastard prince who has both the noble high magic and base beast magic in his blood, and also ends up saving everybody, I mean EVERYBODY, at the cost to his own soul and body, then read this one first. If you’d rather read about pirates and a magic ship, then read the liveship. If you want, like, to lose yourself in another world all summer, start with the Assassin books, then read the Liveship books, then go back to the Fitz and Fool books, because those follow a couple of the characters from the Assassin books as they get older and the plots thicken. Also. More dragons. You can actually watch Fitz get older. The first book is him as a boy. He saves the world, yadda yadda, grows up, and in each following series he grows up more and saves the world again. Real, actual maturing.

Now these books CAN be very dark. But if you like The 100, with it’s strong characters fighting for their lives and souls, and suffering for it, and victories at a cost, then you might like this book. It’s not fluffy. At all. There is torture. Lots of it. Abusive childhoods. Adopted families. Tragedy aplenty. Broken hearts. Death. But it’s also engaging and addictive and sweeping and dramatic and epic. I would put Robin Hobb on a par with GRR Martin, but a woman. Do expect that kind of pain though, but the stories are more feminist. And it’s actually more original and less traditional.

Now I don’t look for this when I read, and this isn’t a “PC” book, meaning expect characters to be problematic and stupid sometimes, but it addresses some social and identity issues. For instance, the country of Farseers, inland, is mostly white. But the coast and the Farseers themselves are definitely not. They were barbarian raiders, and darker skinned with black hair, so the kings and princes, while it doesn’t SAY their ethnicity, seem to be a kind of northern native american/asian-viking kind of hybrid. Maybe like if Mongolians were seafaring like the vikings. The barbarian raiders conquered the land and settled down to rule it. But the barbarian raiders are still out there raiding. And the soft, white inland farmers still want to be in control. But the publishing industry the way it is, I feel like they play that down. The Farseers are not white, but they do intermarry with the white inland duchies. And to the south is a country of slavers, (not racially motivated) who no one likes. And when they do like them? Expect them to be evil. lol. There are also multiple disabled characters. Heroic ones. Gosh I can’t actually spoil on that one, either, but it’s kind of a plot point in many of the series. Geez Robin. I did not even REALIZE how much this matters to you. (ALTHOUGH, she did write a story about an obese character. And I don’t mean chubby. I mean OBESE, it’s part of his magic. It isn’t my favorite of hers, Soldier’s Son Trilogy. Not set in the world of Fitz. It figures that none of the book covers show him as fat.) She writes about those people that society discards. Always.

And. Well. I don’t really want to give it away, because it’s kind of a big part of the story, but I’d call the Farseer books lgbt. Not because there is a typical wlw or mlm love story… uhm… but… Ugh. I can’t give it away. Let’s just say there’s a non binary major character. Who you will love. Who I love. I’ve never seen anything like them. Main character. V. Important. You have to really read the whole story to unravel it all, though. Like ALL the books. It’s epic. Cannot express enough my love for this character. Cannot tell you more specifically because their life and story is intrinsically plot related. But trust me it’s amazing, particularly if you’d like to read an LGBT story about the letters other than L or G. Yes. I think that’s the best way to describe it. I wouldn’t want you to think that it’s a typical L/G story because you might be disappointed not to see that. There are an awful lot of hetero romances. But…. There is an epic story running through all the books and it ain’t cishet. But it takes so long to develop, you have to invest in it. Dudes. It’s worth it.

Wow. That’s a lot of gushing. I guess that’s my rec.

#recs #books #fantasy #robin hobb #okay i guess i can tell you the non binary characters name at least #it's the fool #just trust me #i love him

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