Did anyone like Forest Mage by Robin Hobb (open spoilers)

I finished Forest Mage recently; it was the 11th Robin Hobb that I have finished. I really did not enjoy this book at all. And reflecting back on the story, I outright disliked this book so much that I’ve given up on reading the final installment, Renegade’s Magic. I had much the same feeling with one of her other books, Assassin’s Quest, but after some reflection, I realized that much of my frustration with that book was that I wasn’t embracing the story she was telling, but instead I was expecting to read the story that I was imaging. I was able to reconcile this enough to try the Liveship Trilogy which I thought was outstanding.

The thing is, I don’t feel any such reconciliation about Forest Mage. I sure would like to think my 1400 page investment wasn’t for nothing. So did anyone else read this book? What did you think? And is there anything that I am missing that would encourage me to soldier on?

I really enjoyed Shaman’s Crossing. I thought the time-period was really interesting as were the parallels between Gernia and the colonization of America. I found the different settings and cultures kept my interest through the entire book. I enjoyed the twists near the end and I appreciated the plot resolution at the very end (a major weakness in some of her other books). When I first started reading, I was disappointed to see it was in first-person, but it turned out not to be a problem. Nor was Nevare a clone of Fitz or the King’s Cavalla Academy a clone of Hogwarts.

However, Forest Mage seemed to be phoned-in. The book was so-so up until Gettys, but at that point in stagnated. The showdown with Dewara was anticlimactic and the lack of any resolution at the ending was a return to the weakness of the Royal Assassain trilogy. Some of the characters, like Amzil, the scout, the Colonel, and Sgt. Hoster were interesting. But a lof of the major characters, like Spink and Epiny, were completely lifeless.

While I could eventually buy the complete character changes of his friends and family, I was put off by a few: Sergeant Duril turns from a sharp and crusty sergeant to an intelligent and introspective mentor with a tender heart. Likewise one of Nevare’s graveyard buddys (Kester?) turns from half-wit, ditch digger to a guy that waxes about the pride of the unit. Despite all of the pages dedicated to Nevare’s relationship with the Specks, we really don’t discover much that is interesting about them. I would have liked to learn more about the Specks, the other mage, Jobi, and Lisana.

Then there is the magic, it affects pretty much everyone – his friends, family, the school doctor, the entire town of Gettys. It is so powerful it can turn his own family, even his sister, against him. It drags on Spink and Epiny, the later to the point of attempting suicide. It does everything it can to force Nevare to do its task. And yet, there are random spots of complete immunity: Duril seems immune, Nevare’s uncle too, Spink and Epiny never doubt Nevare. And this magic is so powerful that it can dominate an entire town, but it can’t bend the tide of the road. OK, maybe the magic is stubborn and not pragmatic; it would rather chance losing the trees of knowledge instead of rerouting the road. But the worst part about the magic is that it nullifies most of the character development of the entire book. We find out that all of the pages describing his father turning into a psychotic asshole weren’t character development, but instead just a plot device completely out of his control. Ditto for the rest of Nevare’s family, friends, neighbors, and the town of Gettys. They don’t really hate fat people that much, the magic is making them do it. They aren’t that class-ist, the magic is doing it. What is the point about reading a story about some nebulous super-magic that can twist the plot and characters in any direction?

But the thing that bothered me the most was the morphing of Nevare into Fitz 2.0. In Shaman’s Crossing, Nevare is intelligent, optimistic, very naive, and too risk-adverse. By the end of Forest Mage, Nevare becomes Fitz: a slow-witted, whiny hermit that is freakishly stubborn but refuses to take action under the false pretense that it protects those he cares about despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I was interested to read about this character once (or actually six times), but I don’t need to read about a clone of him.

So what do you think? Am I way off-base? Are there good reasons to continue?

If you didn’t like Forest Mage, you will hate Renegade’s Magic. I sort of agree with many of your points, but still felt compelled to read it, becaue I like her style. But the developments in Renegade’s Magic really bothered me - right up until the last few chapters when things finally started to actually progress.

Robin Hobb tends to like writing three or four entire chapters where nothing happens at all, but she still manages to fill it with compelling character behaviour. But not in this last book, instead it just felt like 500 pages of filler as she desperately tried to figure out how to get out of the corner she painted herself into by making Nevare the most frustratingly dense self-absorbed dickhead she possibly could.

Over all, the entire series of 2000 pages could’ve been all told in 800 pages just fine, and it would’ve been better off for it.

I’d like her to take a break from epics, and first person male characters, for her next one.

I have been feeling a little unsatisfied since I finished Renegade, and you have just summed up why!

I must say however that I still enjoyed the series as a whole, but it wasn’t up to the standard of the Assassin series.

Oh, well, if you prefer her other series… coming soon(ish): Dragonfire -

a single volume, set (a generation?) after the events in Fool’s Fate with completely new characters, but some “cameos” from familiar characters also.

Manuscript deadline December 2008 so set to be published in 2009


I only read part one of Shaman’s Crossing; I got fed up with the juvenile antics at the military academy.

Thanks a lot GuanoLad. It sounds like we are on the same page, so I will take your advice and skip it.

I definitely got that out of Forest Mage. I don’t mind spending 500 pages reading about day-to-day activities if it gives me a feel for the world and what it would be like to live in it. I also like that it brings realism and surprise to the story since every detail is not automatically a plot-device. Fitz gets his dead fathers sword and that’s it for the sword. It’s a regular sword and the pages simply expound on the character. It’s not automatically a +9 magic sword of lightning smite guaranteed to kill the antagonist. I know when I am reading a 25 page short-story and the first page mentions a musket hanging over the fireplace, it is a pretty good bet that the musket is going to be a key feature of the story’s climax.

I can echo this for sure. First person let’s an author establish the narrator’s voice and really get into his brain, but it comes with a ton of constraints – especially for a 2400 page trilogy. You really can’t get into anyone else’s head and develop their character. Nor can you jump around to different locations and times. To give the reader the same insights, the author has to settle for clunky methods like dream sequences or find awkward ways for the narrator to be in ear-shot of all important dialog.