Renegade's Magic

Young soldier Nevare Burvelle’s career and life seem to be drawing to a close, for he has been sentenced to death for crimes allegedly committed under the influence of Speck magic. Desperate, he flees into the wilderness and close to Speck territory, where the Speck curse turns him into a renegade against his own people. He uses all his skill and his previous experience to devise a plan to slaughter his old comrades wholesale and return to the Speck the territory they claim. Yet he doesn’t lose his memories of other loyalties and friendships, and in the last two-thirds of the book, a terrifying ethical conflict takes place within him as he battles to resist the very real temptation to become an all-destroying demonic force. Hobb has a positive genius for using fantasy themes to set up ethical conflicts, exhibited to great advantage in the Liveship Traders (Ship of Magic, 1998; Mad Ship, 1999; Ship of Destiny, 2000) and with equal or greater power here in Soldier Son (Shaman’s Crossing, 2005; Forest Mage, 2006; Renegade’s Magic). There are no easy victories, no all-conquering forces on either side in Hobb’s work, and both sides are sufficiently well characterized in their vivid settings that there are very few straw men in evidence.