Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince and Words Like Coins (The Realm of the Elderlings) by Robin Hobb by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince

and Words Like Coins (The Realm of the Elderlings)

by Robin Hobb

by Karen S. Wiesner 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Robin Hobb is the author of The Realm of the Elderlings. Within this umbrella series, she's written five "miniseries" and numerous short stories. In previous Alien Romances Blog posts, I've reviewed The Inheritance & Other Stories, which contains a couple Realm of the Elderlings offerings. I also reviewed the first trilogy of novels within this series, The Farseer Trilogy. Do a search on both of them if you missed them previously. 

After recovering from the intensity of that first offering, I took a month or so off before I could get myself to read anything else the author has written within this overarching saga. Following that break, I was able to read two miscellaneous novellas in the series, "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" and "Words Like Coins" which are the focus of this review. I was only able to buy ebook versions for both of these stories, which disappointed me as a collector. If I love a series, I want tangible copies. 

I was expecting to dislike both of these stories since I've found I prefer Robin Hobb's full-length novels immeasurably more than her short work (especially the stuff written under her real name Megan Lindholm), but I was very impressed with both of these short tales. I read them within a few hours. "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" was the first I read. I opened "Words Like Coins" immediately after, and I simply couldn't put it down. 

"The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" was published January 1, 2013. It's referred to as a prequel to The Farseer Trilogy (#0.5). At 159 pages, the novella takes places before the time of Chivalry Farseer (Fitz's father from the original trilogy), and deals with another imprudent royal. Princess Caution Farseer is anything like her name. As queen-in-waiting, she's headstrong and rash. Caution has absolutely no interest in learning anything about the duties, responsibilities, and politics of running a kingdom, and rules and regulations have nothing to do with her! Caution falls in love with a Witted (a human bonded with an animal, allowing them to share thoughts and behavior) man with piebald markings. He possesses a piebald horse that will act tame with none other than himself. Caution literally throws all care to the wind and becomes pregnant by this Witted one. But can a happily-ever-after be in store for a spoiled princess and a man who's partly beast through his Witted skills? 

The story is told from the unvarnished point of view of Felicity, a low-born who becomes a sometimes treacherous companion to the princess almost from birth. Felicity more often than not follows the ill-advised, selfish wisdom of her own mother, and this leads to her own downfall as well as that of her charge. That made for some very excited reading! While it was often difficult to feel sorry for many of the characters in this novella, since they made their own beds, so to speak, with their poor choices and behavior, the plot nevertheless held me enthralled from start to finish. 

This tale serves as a kind of explanation about why the Witted are looked upon with such disdain in The Farseer Trilogy and more firmly establishes Fitz's origins there. 

 

"Words Like Coins" (first published in the 2009 anthology A Fantasy Medley) is considered Book number 1.5 in The Realm of the Elderlings. The 10,000 word tale was published as a standalone ebook on May 10, 2012. 

Mirrifen is the failed apprentice of a hedge witch (utilizing "natural" herbal magic). She married for security, as did her sister-in-law Jami, who's pregnant. When their husbands go off in search of work, a severe drought overtakes the farm in their absence. Rats accumulate, and Jami becomes paranoid about the fact that rats are rumored to bring pecksies. 

A pecksie is a mythological fey creature (something like a pixie) about half the size of a cat. Humans can bind them by providing assistance to one, who will then give favors. Pecksies don't take kindly to any human doing this to them, of course, since the binding can't be reversed. Jami relates the story about how her folks tried to bind a pecksie and soon paid the price when they were overrun with them. 

Mirrifen doesn't believe a word of it--until she comes across a pecksie who begs for a drink at the well, even if it means she'll be bound to Mirrifen. The fey brags that her people hunt in silence, no words necessary. "Words are like coins. To spend carefully, as they are needed only. Not to scatter like humans do." But her people are too small to draw water from the well. Only Mirrifen can help them. 

When she does, the binding between them is accomplished. This particular pecksie is a charm-maker. When Jami and her baby need help, the only one capable of saving her may not be Mirrifen but the pecksie Jami fears most. 

"Words Like Coins" is such a delightful tale with irresistible characters and a conflict that's not easily solved. As I said, I read it in almost no time at all, since I couldn't put it down until I found out how it resolved. 

While "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" has a direct connection to the world and characters the previous trilogy created with the Farseer kingdom and royal line origins, "Words Like Coins" is simply a story that takes place somewhere in that world without any real connection beyond the author's word for it that it's related. But that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. Both are definitely worth your time and money. "The Willful Princess" will only set you back $5.99, "Words Like Coins" $2.99. 

As I'm writing this, I'm in the process of reading the next novels in the series with The Liveship Traders Trilogy, so that review is coming up soon. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Inheritance & Other Stories by Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb by Karen S. Wiesner

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Inheritance & Other Stories

by Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb are both pen names for Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, an American author of speculative fiction. As Lindholm, the stories tend to be shorter and less detailed in a variety of genres. As Hobb, characterization, settings, and conflicts are deeper and wider, producing much larger works. Hobb is best known for her The Realm of the Elderlings fantasy stories, and that's how I became a fan of hers. I'd read the novella "The Homecoming", which is connected to The Realm of the Elderlings in that it's set in the Rain Wilds positioned at the far west edges of the Six Duchies. The Rain Wilds are all but uninhabitable swampland near the mountain ranges. Within this umbrella series, she's written five "miniseries" and numerous short stories. 

"The Homecoming" by Robin Hobb was my favorite story in the review I did February 28, 2025 on the Alien Romances Blog for Legends II: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, edited by Robert Silverberg. I'd never read anything like it, and I wanted to know more about this "Rain Wilds" setting, as well as the lost civilizations and Elderlings mentioned in it. While I'm writing this particular review, I'm reading her very first trilogy in The Realm of the Elderlings, The Farseer. I read Book 1, and, while I was waiting for Book 2 arrive, I'd already received the copy of The Inheritance & Other Stories I'd ordered, so I thought I'd start on that. Having done some research on the author and her offerings under these two pseudonyms, I knew that the author herself said she found when writing as Hobb she "wrote with a depth of feeling that I didn't usually indulge". I did find that to definitively be the case here. 

This collection of stories written under both pen names includes: 

Megan Lindholm

"A Touch of Lavender"

"Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man:

"Cut"

"The Fifth Squashed Cat"

"The Strays"

"Finis"

"Drum Machine" 

Robin Hobb

"Homecoming"

"The Inheritance"

"Cat's Meat" 

There is definitely a marked difference in tone and style evident between the pen names. For the most part, I wasn't enamored with the Lindholm stories, though I expect a lot of readers will find meaning in these pieces that felt more like slice of life vignettes to me. For me, the stories in these comparably much shorter seven pieces seemed to form suddenly out of thin air, never gaining a lot of flesh and blood, and, just as unexpectedly, dissipated almost beyond recall. To be more specific, they reminded me a lot like of paint splatter art. Colors are thrown across the room at the page without rhyme, reason, let alone forethought. The writer almost leaves it up to the reader to decide if what's created of this has any lasting value. 

To be fair, Lindholm is a good writer and her work in this anthology was some of her earlier material. Beyond that, she's received countless awards and accolades as a writer for her work, and most of the pieces here have in fact won many honors in the industry. I believe those are well-deserved. However, what I've learned from reading this collection is that I will probably only focus on the Robin Hobb offerings from this point on. 

I think my biggest problem with the Lindholm stories is that I felt like they could have been set anywhere and in any time, in the point of view of any other character, and the outcome would have been exactly the same. In each story, there was little or no development with character, setting, or plot. They all just showed up for a single purpose, and once that was accomplished, it was over. Nothing about them will last very long in my memory as a result of what felt like intentional carelessness. I'm afraid this is exactly what the author was going for with each of these stories, no justifications and no apologies. 

"A Touch of Lavender", the first Lindholm story in the anthology, was, if nothing else, compelling in an absolutely off-the-wall way. I'd gone into it not sure what to expect of the Lindholm pen name. For that reason, I admit, I probably gave it more of a chance to win me over than any another of the other six written under this pseudonym. (Also, "Finis" gave a hell of a twist, again, if nothing else, and that's really all I have to say about the rest of the Lindholm contributions.) 

Within this collection, the author included a brief introduction to each story, telling us a bit about what inspired her to write it. I love those sorts of insights. The preface to "A Touch of Lavender" spoke of something intriguing that, to me, summed up all her Lindholm stories very succinctly. She said that she will receive at times odd sentences that intrude in her mind. She writes these down, knowing they're intended to be the first line of a story she doesn't yet know. She has a whole desk drawer full of them. She calls these "butterfly lines"--ideas that have to be captured immediately or they'll flutter off forever. Cool. But I'm not actually sure this is a good idea for any writer, as I'll explain in a second. 

Later, she plucked one of these first sentences out of the drawer and used it as the basis of "A Touch of Lavender". This butterfly line is: "We grew up like mice in a rotting sofa, my sister and I." This is the longest of the Lindholm contributions, and she then proceeded to tell a tale in which the point of view character didn't have a sister at all, not until the very end of it. At that stage, it almost felt as if the author felt compelled to tack something onto this story she'd written to justify the first sentence. To me, the "tack on" didn't really fit the rest of the story, nor did it really warrant being included, since I believe it almost intruded on the theme. 

What was the theme? I'm not entirely sure, and the reason for that is because I don't want to resort to allegory, which I distrust and even hate when it comes to fiction. There's a huge tendency these days for readers and reviewers to serve a biased agenda by forcing a story to fit some allegory about the real world. The authors may have intended nothing like what's built up to be allegorical to a modern-day trend. 

In my research of this author and her body of work, it seems to me so much of her work (especially her Robin Hobb offerings) is forced into allegorical renderings by those with an undeniable agenda. I stopped short of researching whether the author has ever commented on all of this because, honestly, I don't want to know any more. I'd prefer to accept the author's works as she's written them and not read something in that she may or may not have ever intended. 

Anyway, "A Touch of Lavender" was basically a futuristic story about a dead-beat Mom, living on aid, who's drawn to music (and, not surprisingly, dead-beat musicians who mooch off her and her kid, who was conceived of with a former dead-beat musician boyfriend whose long since gone the way of the dodo in both of their lives). Meanwhile, the Earth at this time has been invaded by aliens who have weird musical talents. The story is told from the POV of the kid. Boundaries between humans and aliens are challenged and unexpected things happen as a result. As I said, a strange, mildly compelling story that came, went, and disappeared like so much dandelion fluff, leaving not much more to linger in its wake. 

As with Legends II, my favorite story in this anthology is "The Homecoming". But since I've already reviewed that, I'll focus here on the other two in this collection: "The Inheritance" and "Cat's Meat". Both are connected to Robin Hobb's The Realm of the Elderlings, "The Inheritance" and "Cat's Meat" taking place, respectively, in Bingham (in the far southwest of the Six Duchies) and Buck (close to Forge, a pivotal setting in the first book in The Farseer Trilogy). Both feature heroines who have suffered at the hands of bad men. "The Inheritance" tells the extremely unexpected tale of a necklace cameo that the main character inherited from her grandmother. "Cat's Meat" is the story of a woman who was used by a man she'd loved, got pregnant by him, and was abandoned in favor of someone richer and prettier, and then that jackass returns to her, expecting to be forgiven and taken back as if he's done nothing wrong. The unexpected twist in this story is a cat who feels very protective of the main character and her son. 

Both stories are well-written, intriguing if not more than a little frustrating because the women displayed such love-sick stupidity until the end, when they finally became strong enough to change the course of their own lives I found that worth rooting for. All three of the Hobb stories featured women who were downtrodden by society and the men in their lives in these old-fashioned time periods, expected to be and do only what females were allowed then. I appreciated how they turned the tables on everyone--with a little help from magic. The catalyst for them doing what they all eventually go on to do in each case is packed with a supernatural surprise and consequences that are far from predictable. While neither "The Inheritance" or "Cat's Meat" had quite the depth and atmosphere that "The Homecoming" evoked for me so profoundly, both were still good and worthy of a read to enlarge the world Hobb has created in The Realms of the Elderlings. 

I do intend to review all the subseries within Robin Hobb's overall series in the future, so stay tuned for those in coming months. I have the highest hopes for all or most of them to live up to everything I'm looking for in this complex series. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/