Cover of Renegade's Magic

Renegade's Magic

core novel 2007 The Soldier Son Trilogy

Record

First published2007
Original language EN
Work typenovel
Canon statuscore
Reader rating3.57 (17,531 ratings, collected 2026-09-11)
Page count691
First-edition ISBN9780060757649
Internal chronology3

Synopsis

Renegade's Magic opens with Nevare Burvelle facing execution for crimes he did not commit, from which he escapes with the help of Lisana, a Speck woman he loves, after having been framed. The novel's central conflict sets Nevare's Gernian homeland, which is pushing to build a road through and fell an ancient forest of Elder Trees housing the ancestral spirits of the Speck people, against the Specks themselves, who regard the forest as sacred. Complicating matters further, a Speck spirit known as Soldier's Boy has come to inhabit Nevare's body and increasingly seizes control of it, leaving Nevare a horrified, largely powerless witness trapped behind his own alter ego's actions as Soldier's Boy works to sabotage the road-building effort. The novel closes out the Soldier Son trilogy's exploration of the collision between Gernian colonial ambition and Speck magic and identity.

Where it sits

Notes

  • From the series record (The Soldier Son Trilogy): A distinct continuity from Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings -- shares no characters, setting, or continuity.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.

  • Reading order, within the series The Soldier Son Trilogy: position 3 of 3: previous Forest Mage (2006)

Sources

← The Soldier Son Trilogy dossier · All universes

Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.