I mentioned this series when I wrote my post on Wednesday, and since then I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot.  The Soldier son trilogy isn’t for everyone, and I know some people who were never keen on it as it was a big departure from Robin Hobb’s other books set in the Three-Kingdoms, or those on the Live Ships and Dragons of Bingtown.  The Soldier Son novels, despite being works of fantasy, are set in a relatively modern world with rifles and guns, and Hobb develops an unorthodox main character from that which you’d normally expect from a fantasy series.  However, these novels strengths are that they cover a lot of issues that we would recognise from our own world, and really make you think about our own perceptions to those same issues. I don’t want to give too much away, but the conflicting issues in these novels are between the progress and development of the modern world on the one-side, and the traditions and magical beliefs of a land that is coming …