Forest Mage

Forest mage (Soldier’s son, part 2) ** (of 5)

This is a Fantasy novel about a fat man on a diet. I suppose Hobb’s the only one to pull that one of.
And it’s actually a lot more interesting than it sounds.
Unfortunately, since it doesn’t sound interesting at all, there is a slight flaw in this reasoning…

Short summary of Shamans Crossing, the first part of the trilogy.
Young Nevare is the second son, and thus he must be a solider, according to the will of the good god (the first son is the heir, the third a priest, the forth an artist and so on. The daughters? Well, they’re wives, of course!) Nevare is looking forward a lot to his military career, but as things turn out (eventually) he ends up in the hands of a magic that is controlling him more and more….
This was an absolutely boring book, and I only got through it because…because its Hobbs! She’s great! Alas, not this time. (In other news, Hell reports ice floes)

In Forest Mage, something is happening to the lean young solider boy. He’s getting fat. Very fat. (Imagine those clay stoneage fat women) No matter what he does, even when he starves himself, he only get fatter. Might this have something to do with the mysterious Speck Plague? And what of his other self, the one he thought he reclaimed from the Specks?

This is not quite as boring a book as Shamans Crossing, but it’s not Farseer or Liveship traders by a long shout. There are some wondrous parts – mostly dealing with woods and forests and the Specks – where the true Hobb’s skills surfaces, but there’s no pace, no passion. Even when horrible things happened, you start thinking ‘ah, well, I didn’t much like those people anyway.’
Still, I’ll read the last one when it comes, I suppose.
Why?
Because it’s Hobbs. I wont give up on her. Not just yet.

And when I die, I want a Speck funeral