Soldier Son Trilogy was on sale for a low price, so I bought it since Robin Hobb had a good reputation Narrated from a first person point of view, the protagonist isn't very likeable, and you frequently want to yell at him to stop ignoring the obvious.
The worldbuilding is simple: you've got a kingdom that just lost the war and decided to increase the size of its empire by prosecuting a war against nomadic people. They won this war and subjugated the nomads, and Nevare Burvelle is the second son of one of the successful soldiers who got elevated to nobility by the King. Having finished conquering the nomads, the kingdom decides to extend its empire into the forest dominated by the Specks, a hunter-gatherer culture. If all this sounds familiar, it's because the plot is very similar to that of the movie Avatar, with the Western-dominated culture represented by a monarchy rather than by a greedy corporation.
The society is patriarchal, with second sons expected to become soldiers and the narrator buys into all that, never questioning his father, his religion, or his role in life. Then his father has him trained by a one of the subjugated people who introduces him into a shadow world where he gains magical powers but refuses to acknowledge that they exist.
The writing is transparent and easy to read, and the story of Nevare making it to the capital and then getting embroiled in the politics of his world while being in the officer's academy somehow manages to avoid all the cliches. When the climax of the story arrives you're not surprised but the handling of it is great, and maybe even prescient. Neveare even changes his opinions at the end of the book. The series rewards careful reading as casual one liners can take on momentous consequences later on.
The second part of the trilogy is the worst section, as Burvelle's life goes from bad to worse, and he seems even more dense. But at the end of that section he goes natives and joins the Specks to fulfill his destiny as a forest mage destined to save them from the Western agricultural domination-based culture.
The last book resolves all the issues while giving us a glance at the hunter-gatherer culture. I thought this part was very nicely done, with Burvelle trying to organize the culture and realizing the limits of the egalitarian hunter-gatherer culture and explaining why historically the agricultural patriarchies have always won out over the hunter-gatherers. The magic is never really explained, but the theme here is that you cannot have a partitioned self and expect to fulfill the destiny. The ending is all tied up nicely and a bit pat, but you cannot expect American authors to give you a bittersweet ending.
I enjoyed the series enough to plow through it all within a week, so I can recommend it. It's long and a bit draggy in parts but all in all the transparency made for good reading.
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