The Hob's Bargain | Patricia Briggs

The Hob's Bargain | Patricia Briggs | Hob's Bargain a bargain

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The Hob's Bargain

	The Hob's Bargain Patricia Briggs Ace, 2001 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Her gift of sight has shown her visions of mayhem and murder. So, to save her village from ruthless raiders, Aren of Fallbrook strikes a bargain with the magical Hob, who will exact a heavy price to defend the village?a price Aren herself must pay.

Wow

I loved this book. This book was everything modern fantasy should be. It was light, sweet, rich, dark, funny and real. I felt 14 again, like the first time I opened one of the seminal works of fantasy. I sunk right in to a believable, rich, detailed fantasy world with characters I liked. It was intelligent. It was the whole reason we all picked up fantasy so long ago. To escape. To drift in a beautiful dream.

I can't believe I've never found this author before. I don't know if her other books are as good, but as soon as I have some free time, I fully intend to find out. This was a wonderful reading experience. I haven't fallen in love with a book this hard in such a long time. So many modern authors miss the point. Sci-Fi authors try to 'cross the road' and do fantasy and it comes out as dry and brittle and soulless and dead. So much of modern fantasy is ridiculous political science treatises and high-minded moral plays and attempts to sound intellectual and weighty and it only results in boring, plodding, stories that remove your ability to care about the characters, or the plot, or the resolution. They literally suck the life out of you.

This book does not. It touches on cliches in a charming and reflective way, it reminds you of your childhood, without actually being cliched. It leaves your feet just bumping the ground of the familiar, while reaching new heights, showing you new perspectives, daring to be intellectually challenging and ask moral questions and cast things on their head. It is a tale of magic, of love, of war, of peace, and of the greatness of the human spirit. It's the one book I can't put away on the bookshelf because every time I see it I remember the transport it gave me. For the first time in at least a year, a book really swept me away and pulled me in. That is priceless.

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Hob's Bargain a bargain

Ok this if for everyone bashing this book. Or anyone letting them be swayed by the negative reviews.

This was a fun book. I have read it at least two times and enjoyed it both times. I won't say it is the best book of all times but it was a very respectable story. I must admit that I am very partial to all of Patrica Briggs books and there are some that are better than this one. If I lost my copy of this I would still be willing to buy another copy in a year or so when I wanted to read it again. I'm not going to detail review the book.. just let it be said that it is an engaging fantasy story with characters I came to like. Maybe I'm one of those people that can fill in the details but I didn't find any lack of character building or lack of depth to the background of the story.

get a copy and read it. You won't be disappointed.

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Short But Good

I won't sum up the plot since other reviewers have done a good job of that before me. To add my two cents -- this isn't my favorite of Patricia Brigg's fantasy books (I prefer Masques or When Demons Walk), but it is a good book nonetheless. I can understand some of the other reviewers complaints, this book IS short and thus there's not a whole lot of in depth character development and/or emotions. That was one thing I wished there was more of...more romance, more insight into Aren and the Hob's relationship. I wish there was just...well more. I'd like to have found out more about what the Hob and his people were like before they went extinct. And is he truly the last of his kind? Also, I wish there had been an epilogue or something that showed Aren and the Hob's actual wedding. The book ends while they're still just betrothed. Not to mention how the whole cross-breeding thing would work. Is it even possible for them to have children?

Anyway...this book is a good read. Especially the psychological component of being trapped in one place with strange phenomenon happening all around, and people dying and fighting for survival. It deftly shows the mob mentality and how people will try to find a scapegoat in any situation to make themselves feel better and to justify their actions and beliefs. I especially liked Brigg's insight into magic and her take on magical theory and its place, and effect, on the world. All in all, a good but short read that I would definitely recommend to fantasy lovers.

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Captivating

Even though it is shorter than her other ones, it still makes me turn the page non-stop. I was too lazy to read most of the visions and merely skimmed them instead, but I still love this book. It's not one of her best, but it's still up there. It sure seems hard to be disappointed by one of her books. The ending was a bit like a shock, I didn't know whether to pull for her or just let her be.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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