Yet There Are Statues

Liveship Traders Trilogy by Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb showed in the Farseer Trilogy that she was capable of writing a very good character based fantasy. Now she moves from first person to the standard third person with a dozen viewpoint characters. The Farseer books were very focused, but here she allows her narrative to sprawl. Here she is even more inventive than in the Farseer books and still does an admirable job with her characters. The first book I was actually not a huge fan of, simply because it consisted of being ruthless to every sympathetic character. She is very much a practioner of the “worst thing that can happen to your characters” school here, to the point I started to be turned off by the story. Also there is a character who was so obnoxious (and got so much screen time) it was very annoying. However the second and third books set matters to rights. Read this trilogy after reading the Farseer trilogy, since although they are not wholly dependent you will miss certain things if you do not. Also I think the Farseer trilogy is better, though these are very good and highly recommended.