Robin Hobb

She's inspired me to never write like she does.

Her characters are so stagnant, it's the only way she seems able to stretch her plot out. If her characters had any sense of growth about them, she'd have a short story on her hands. Possibly a novelette.

I didn't fully grasp the problem in her Farseer trilogy, but it hit home in the Liveship series. OMG. It was awful. Kennit and that irritating girl who tried to get laid in the first book and ended up with the dragon crest on her head were the worst. I had to sit through hundreds of pages of frustration, waiting for that moment when they realized how annoying, selfish and childish they were. It never came for Kennit; the bastard rapist died and was adored by his mad ship, his lover and his crew. The girl wasn't quite as bad, but in any other series, she'd be the bitch who didn't get it.

I know that much of the appeal of any fiction is the flaws that the characters have. But most of her main characters seem to be stuck in first gear. Her Tawny Man trilogy was the best of everything she's written, and redeemed her momentarily in my eyes. (You must wonder why I keep reading her books. My husband loves her writing, and they're lying around, and I get bored.) But when she started up that Soldier Son trilogy, and I read the first book, I nearly burned it. The MC couldn't break out of his mentality, ever. It would be one thing if everyone around him was as he was, but the way it was written, he came across as narrow minded and a bit dim, and the only reason he got anything accomplished was because the spotted folk (can't recall their name) unleashed a poo-dust plague on him and his city, and he survived, therefore becoming rare and useful.

The second book, I refused to read, after reading reviews that supported my opinion of her character development. I'm done with her. And I make a point of having my main characters learn and grow in every long story I write now. God forbid I write a pack of cardboard, biased people into existence, even if I got paid for it.