Robin Hobb, Forest Mage

Forest Mage

Robin Hobb

EOS, September 2006, $25.95, 736 pp.

ISBN 0060757632

After recovering from the plague, second son Nevare Burvelle is the only one who feels he is not skin on bones. His doctor believes he is gaining too much weight, a rare symptom of the plague. Nobody believes him that the plague came and spread when the primitive magic believers, the Speck people used dust during the dance that made people sick. He believes this because he fought Tree Woman in another realm and recovered the missing part of himself, a person who was Tree Woman's lover and used magic.

Now Nevare is returning home, crossing the planes where the King's Road is destroying the magic and way of life and bringing outsiders who settle there. He watches the magic being totally destroyed when he sees a boy put cold iron on the Dancing Spiral. Twice, he unknowingly uses magic, and by the time he reaches home, he is worse than obese. Almost his whole family turns on him, and his father disowns him. He journeys to the frontier post of Gettys where he becomes an enlightened man taking care of the cemetery. The Speck people tell him that the magic controls him and he is supposed to stop the sacred trees from being torn down because the magic told them so. He doesn't know how to use the magic, and if he doesn't find answers soon, the Specks will bring war on Nevare's country and that means death to all he holds dear.

Robin Hobb is one of the best high fantasy writers of the new millennium. Her characters, no matter how secondary, are well drawn and have complete personalities. The protagonist is not a hero by choice, but because the magic chose him, and although he fights it, in the end he gives in to its demand to save his loved ones. There is plenty of action and lots of excitement in FOREST MAGE, so readers will thoroughly enjoy this spellbinding tale.