Rating: 
Summary: More please
Review: I've read Briggs' Steal the Dragon, When Demons Walk, and The Hob's Bargain, and I love all of them. I really look forward to new books from Briggs, and the only complaint that I have is that I think she really needs to continue these individual storylines! They all end in a way that's very conducive to further plot development, and I wonder why she's continued working with her world of magic-hating priests, but she hasn't done any sequels featuring Rialla, Sham, or Aren...If you like adventure mixed with a touch of romance, read these novels.
Rating:
Summary: A nice fairy tale kind story...
Review: In a land that was settled with the help of bloodmagic the hold of bloodmagic is weakening and therefore the wildlings that were bound come back... Aren is a young woman with magic of her own that she has hidden carefully as have all the others with this power, so as not to be killed (the women) or drafted as bloodmages (the men). But now the village needs magic to help it survive after raidings, natural catastrophes and wildlings threaten it. The hob is one of the wildlings that is willing to help the humans. As it is the last of the hobs it needs a wife... Though I liked the idea and the two main characters of the book (and the hob's tail), I felt it lacked depth and vividness. Still it is a nice book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Just Beauty and the Beast
Review: The Hob's Bargain opens the door to a world that I hope Patricia Briggs returns to again and again. Aren, the main character must deal with heartbreaking challenges and find the courage to face obstacles she never could imagine. After finally marrying and escaping spinsterhood she loses her husband and family and life itself changes forever. She must face her worst fears, reveal her darkest secrets and discover the darker aspects of herself. In the end the Hob's Bargain is anticlimatic and almost a relief. I enjoyed the small glimpse Ms. Briggs gave her readers in to Aren's world. The Wild Magic returns and with it creatures of all kind including the Hobb. The Hobb is an interesting character that I wish was explored more. His lack of memory is frustrating. I especially enjoyed the way Aren learns to use her magic. Her encounters with ghost are interesting. I found the tale enjoyable, refreshing and hope to see more adventures if not with the same characters with others in the same environment. The themes may be familiar but the story is fresh and has its own surprises. Here's to more adventures
Rating:
Summary: Not Just Beauty and the Beast
Review: The Hob's Bargain opens the door to a world that I hope Patricia Briggs returns to again and again. Aren, the main character must deal with heartbreaking challenges and find the courage to face obstacles she never could imagine. After finally marrying and escaping spinsterhood she loses her husband and family and life itself changes forever. She must face her worst fears, reveal her darkest secrets and discover the darker aspects of herself. In the end the Hob's Bargain is anticlimatic and almost a relief. I enjoyed the small glimpse Ms. Briggs gave her readers in to Aren's world. The Wild Magic returns and with it creatures of all kind including the Hobb. The Hobb is an interesting character that I wish was explored more. His lack of memory is frustrating. I especially enjoyed the way Aren learns to use her magic. Her encounters with ghost are interesting. I found the tale enjoyable, refreshing and hope to see more adventures if not with the same characters with others in the same environment. The themes may be familiar but the story is fresh and has its own surprises. Here's to more adventures
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Variations on a Standard Theme
Review: There is a type of story that has become more and more common in mass-market fantasy -- the "noble-folk-magic-vs.-evil/stupid-monotheist-church" story. (Mercedes Lackey is a particularly prominent practitioner.) This book takes off from that situation, and elements of it walk throughout the text, but it's not *too* heavy-handedly applied. I rather like the manner in which Briggs limits the scope of her action, thus giving herself a nicely-sized cast with a limited number of spear-carriers for author and reader to keep track of, but still conveying to the reader the manner in which the sort of society she has visualised depends on every member to get through the seasons. Quick summary -- in a mountain valley in a world where the Church has banned magic, and the wild magic has been bound away, leaving only evil bloodmages able to practise magic, Aren, just married after having resigned herself to spinsterhood, has been hiding ther "taint" of being mage-born all her life. Suddenly some event in a war going on somewhere else releases the binding on the wild magic, which begins to return; events attendant isolate the valley where Aren lives, trapping the locals and a troop of renegade mercenaries and preventing their contact with the Outside. And Aren, suddenly widowed, begins to feel her gift come to life. The story isn't complex, but it has some nice twists and turns in its development to what is, after all, pretty obviously inevitable relatively early in the book; i congratulate Briggs on managing to make if look as if Aren isn't, essentially, single-handedly saving the situation when, to a great extent, she *is*... While the other characters are generally at least interesting, and well-sketched, and brave and (many) skilled, if not for Aren and her banned-by-the-Church magical gifts (and the magical help they enable her to summon), the whole story would be shorter and less pleasant. Actually, my favourite parts of the book, in general, were the varied "wildings" (magical beings who gradually return to the land after its magic is unbound at the beginning of the book) that Aren encounters and must learn how to either co-exist with, control, or defeat/banish, as she learns more about her abilities and as those abilities grow. The wildings range from the will'o'the wisp and such, up through more powerful beings (ghosts and fetches and such), some friendly, some inimical, and some neutral. And among the rather more powerful, and *probably* friendly, is the hob of Hob's Mountain, the last of his kind, who befriends Aren, offers to train her and to aid the villagers in their parallel struggles with raiders and bad wildings... for a price. The price shouldn't be all *that* hard to guess. The hob's sometimes sardonic, sometimes acid, sometimes gentle tongue and his general attitude that it may be a life-or-death situation but that doesn't mean you can't have *fun* rather reminded me of Emma Bull's poukha, which is a *good* thing to be reminded of. ((In fact, if you enjoy "The Hob's Bargain" and you haven't yet read Bull's "War for the Oaks", i recommend you seek out "War for the Oaks" immediately, a fantasy with a somewhat more-intense take on similar themes to this one, with a modern urban setting.))
Rating:
Summary: GREAT STAND-ALONE BOOK COULD EASILY SUPPORT SEQUEL
Review: THIS IS A WELL WRITTEN BOOK WITH AN INTERESTING MAIN CHARACTER AS WELL AS SUPPORTING CHARACTERS. IT IS WELL PACED AND ABSORBING. I PARTICULARLY FOUND THE HOB TO BE A BREATH OF FRESH AIR. I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO EVERYONE AND HOPE TO SEE MORE FROM MS. BRIGGS. I WOULD REALLY LOVE FOR THERE TO BE A CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY LINE, TOO.
Rating:
Summary: True fantastical adventure
Review: This was a quite keen little story. The story while having it's adventurous moments didn't move past showing off the things that made the characters human and real. Aren comes off as a quite real woman of the times. Her true heroicness is shown from the beginning and never waivers. She doesn't make an 180 in terms of personality she just continues to be herself and that's what makes this book great. Even the hob shows his true feelings and makes the reader symphathise with him. Great book. I can't wait to read more from her!!
Rating:
Summary: True fantastical adventure
Review: This was a quite keen little story. The story while having it's adventurous moments didn't move past showing off the things that made the characters human and real. Aren comes off as a quite real woman of the times. Her true heroicness is shown from the beginning and never waivers. She doesn't make an 180 in terms of personality she just continues to be herself and that's what makes this book great. Even the hob shows his true feelings and makes the reader symphathise with him. Great book. I can't wait to read more from her!!
Rating: 
Summary: Unenchanting...
Review: This was one of those books that I kept reading simply because I was low on reading material, and when I finished it, I found myself wondering how the author ever managed to get it published. First, I found the book uninvolving. Basically, readers are plunged into a fantastical world but given little background on it, or reason to care about it or its characters. Here's an example of my biggest problem with this book: It is mostly written in the first person, from the point of view of Aren, a young woman whose entire family, including her parents and new husband, are mercilessly wiped out at the start of the book by a party of raiders. Aren's grieving period lasts, oh, maybe a couple of days, and by the end of the book, she's as sympathetic to the raiders as she is to their victims -- she even saves some of them from attacks by confusing magical creatures. In short, Aren's actions never really make any sense, and she has a dull writing style to boot. The "Hob" of the title was also, in my opinion, a shallowly drawn character, with magical powers that really didn't seem to be an organic part of him. They just arose as needed. He simply didn't ring true as a character. True to character, however, Aren soon forgets her dead husband when she meets this oversized hunk with the flirtatious tail. Plot? What plot? The author just seemed to make things up as she went along. I really do not recommend this book to anyone who's in the market for an undemanding fantasy novel with a hint of romance. If you are, keep looking. This book is undemanding and it has a hint of romance, but it doesn't have a single hint of enchantment.
Rating:
Summary: Magic awakes
Review: When I first read the reviews of this book, I was disappointed that Briggs hadn't returned to the world of her earlier novels (Steal the Dragon, etc), but I knew I would read it because Briggs has an unquestionable talent for telling a good story with a quirky sense of humour. The Hob's Bargain is an enjoyable book with refreshing twists on old themes of love, beauty, magic, and vengeance. My only complaint is that the timing occasionally seemed a little squishy; I finished the book a little bit vague about how much time had passed. That doesn't detract much from the overall effect of the book. I highly recommend this one and look forward to more books from Briggs with more of her capable-but-not-super-human female heroines.
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