This is the final book in Hobb’s Liveship Traders trilogy, and although it took me a long time to get through it I enjoyed it very much, and stayed up late on Saturday night to finish it. This is fairly typical for Hobb’s books: they are very long, and slow to get started; and the problems the characters face are painful enough and develop slowly enough that I usually prefer to read them in small doses. But constant acceleration can build quite a bit of momentum, and I usually end up reading the last couple of hundred pages in one or two big gulps. The effect is more pronounced when the book is the last in a trilogy, as this one is.

It would be difficult to say much about the plot without spoiling the earlier books, so I won’t; but I will say that the ending is quite satisfactory. It resolved the major conflicts (of which there were many), tied off the loose ends, and left me wanting more. Not too shabby, all things considered.