Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Big Tying Up Devastating Conclusion to the Third Fitz Trilogy Assassin’s Fate (2017), the third book in Robin Hobb’s Fitz and the Fool Trilogy, takes up right where the second one left off. Bee (the child of the Fool, Fitz, and Molly) and her awful kidnappers (“Servants” dedicated to using prophetic dreams to guide the world to the future that most benefits them) have exited from a teleportation Skill-pillar after months “lost” in the Skill-stream inside. The girl is trying to run away from her captors, but not getting very far, as Wolf-Father, the spirit of Fitz’ long-deceased bonded wolf Nighteyes, encourages her and gives her not very helpful advice. Meanwhile, Fitz and the Fool and their companions are either about to be trampled or arrested by a mob of Dragon Trader Elderlings, who either want Fitz to correct their dragon-caused mutations or to arrest the “representatives from the Six Duchies.” Fitz and the Fool are still unbelievably assuming their daughter is dead, dispersed for good in the Skill-stream, while trying to get going on their impossible quest for revenge on the Servants in their legendary far away home island Clerres. This third book will reveal the fate of Fitz, Bee, the Fool, and their foes the Servants, as well as the new Elderlings and their dragons and peripherally the Six Duchies and their entire world. The novel is a vengeance mission that morphs into a rescue mission and features a variety of graphic violence, including torture, murder, fights, arson, and dragon acid. The novel answers all questions about the school for prophets on Clerres and provides more information about the Fool’s childhood and parents and history. One can imagine this novel shorter without the liveship and dragon participation, but Hobb wants to tie up her Liveship, Rain Wild, and Farseer trilogies. It’s a book about parenting and teaching and different kinds of love (e.g., “Together we read our daughter’s book”). It’s about the ill effects of revenge (e.g., “There were times when taking vengeance for the dead seemed too high a price for abandoning the living”). It’s about power and knowledge, here fantastically enhanced to prophetic dreams in a “magical castle” island school with libraries controlled by rulers with rigid hierarchy, selfish vision, and appalling torture. The Servants make a more interesting nemesis than the by the numbers femme fatale wicked witch Pale Woman in the Tawny Man Trilogy. The book mostly has Hobb’s virtues on full display: imaginative use of fantasy elements like dragons, liveships, and Skill and Wit magics, compelling characters whose interactions are absorbing to follow; and fine, severe writing, like: “The long slow days aboard Paragon lodged in my life like a bone in the throat.” And: “Think of it [the Skill] this way. If there is water sloshing in my boat, I don't drill a hole in the bottom to let it out. For then the ocean would surge in.” And: “Given how cruel Dwalia had been, I had imagined a whole city of hateful people, not this pastel prosperity.” And: “I saw what the Fool had warned me would be there: A table where chains dangled. A large hearth, cold now. The wrapped tools beside it were not for tending a fire.” I like this book because Bee is back to alternating point of view first-person narrator chapters with Fitz. By using that narrative strategy, Hobb achieves great dramatic irony, because we have access to both characters’ experiences and situations whereas they only have access to their own. Thus, for example, at one point Fitz sees a ship with a bouquet figurehead that we know but he does not is the one that transported Bee came on. However, the novel does suffer from the same probs of the first and second books: inconsistent, too plot-convenient application of magical things, too obtuse characters, too painful treatment of our heroes from the author. Magic sure lets authors do anything they want at any time if they’re not careful. Hobb is too easy with herself to serve her plot requirements vis-a-vis Skill healing, Skill telephoning, Skill teleporting, Nighteyes’ kibitzing, and so on, having these things work or fail to work when it suits her plot development needs without any particular rhyme or reason. Assassin/spy Fitz (and even the more perspicacious and open-minded Fool) take turns puzzling over mysteries that Hobb’s clues have already tipped us off to. At times it gets frustrating or embarrassing. Anyway, the ending of the trilogy serves as a fitting (if devastating) conclusion to the entire saga of Fitz, as if each of the three trilogies (Farseer, Tawny Man, Fitz and the Fool) makes a separate volume in a mega trilogy. (view spoiler)[ It is a bittersweet ending. In the end of the Tawny Man Trilogy, the Fool leaves Fitz a little sculpture showing the faces of Fitz, Fool, and Nighteyes on a small cube of memory stone imbued with a memory for each face so that when you touch any two of them you get a memory that those two shared in the context of all three being a single unit. So it’s perfect that in the end of this trilogy, as Fitz is horribly dying from parasitic worms that eat his organs just faster than he can be healed (Hobb wanting him to finally transcend the flesh), he carves his “dragon” in a huge block of memory stone, giving it the form of a wolf as he infuses it with his memories, saying goodbye to his friends and family. And when the Fool joins him in the stone, he and Fitz are finally intimately together as parts of one being--and Nighteyes makes three. A symmetrical, well-deserved, and satisfying closure of her three-trilogy mega-trilogy. However, Hobb does not imagine for us how the loving trio would be together, does not give us the poignant pleasure of, say, an epilogue from their point of view as they are living as a composite stone dragon/wolf. It is admirable that she doesn't give us too much sugar! But why not give us a little? For example, why not have their composite italicized voice say something to Bee in the end? (hide spoiler)] Finishing it all burnt me out on Fitz and Fool and Farseers, in a mostly good way... View all my reviews
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Fool's Quest by Robin Hobb
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Not Enough Bee, Too Much Contrivance and Pain Fool’s Quest (2015), the second novel in Robin Hobb’s Fitz and the Fool Trilogy, begins immediately after the first one ends, with Fitz (now an unnaturally young and quick-healing 60-year old!) leaving the wounded, traumatized, and crippled Fool asleep and going into Buckkeep Town to buy Winterfest presents for daughter Bee. At the end of the first book in the trilogy, Fool’s Assassin (2014), Bee was kidnapped by the horrible “Servants” who tortured the Fool, so there is an unbearable irony and suspense now for Fitz blithely running errands while oblivious to the violent attack on his country estate Withywoods. Early on the Fool asks Fitz to visit lethal vengeance on the Servants of the legendary, wealthy, and powerful school-island Clerres, which is farther south than the Spice Isles. Fitz is taken aback by his pacifist friend’s violent quest request, but the Fool explains that the Servants are a malevolent threat to the Six Duchies and the world, with their monopoly on dreaming prophetic Dreams, selling their interpretations of them, and engaging in any amount of bioengineering, torture, assassination, and kidnapping so as to make their prophecies come true and to guide the world into a future where they hold supreme power. While the first novel depicts Fitz mostly at Withywoods learning to be a father to a special child while mourning Molly, missing the Fool, and hosting two unpleasant bastards, the second has him mostly at Buckkeep stepping into his new (true?) identity as Prince FitzChivalry Farseer while helping the Fool heal and trying to find a way to rescue Bee daughter, when after the first excruciating ten chapters he FINALLY learns that his daughter has been kidnapped by a brutal band of Chalcedean mercenaries working for a ruthless group of Servants, one of whom is able to manipulate the perceptions and memories of large groups of people and cast spells of despair and forgetfulness on entire towns. There will be revelations about the Skill, Skill-Stones/Pillars, Dragons, Elderlings, and the warped Servants. There will be some graphic violence, e.g., “Assassins take no pride in fighting fairly. We take pride in winning. As I spat out a piece of finger, I told myself Nighteyes would have been proud. I had kept my grip and I felt the flesh of his throat standing in ridges between my fingers.” There will be much fine writing. As usual, Hobb excels at setting characters we care about to interacting with each other, developing them in interesting and unexpected ways, especially Fitz (ever morose, obtuse, and tormented by his author), Chade (ever aging, experimenting, and manipulating), the Fool (uncharacteristically mutilated and demoralized), Ash/Spark (a sweet, capable boy/girl), and Perseverance (the young stablehand loyal to Bee). That said, Dutiful, Shine, Nettle, and Thick are not used very interestingly. Hobb is capable of lame character development. Fitz says, “I had considered taking an axe; it was definitely my better weapon,” but he never uses one in combat in the Tawny Man Trilogy or in this one so far. He’s almost irritatingly morose in this book, saying things like, “I was becoming very weary of being useless and incompetent,” and “Sorrow and loss never die. We can put them away in a chest and lock it tight, but whenever it is opened, even a crack, the aroma of last sweetness will rise to fill our lungs to heaviness.” Fitz is unbelievably flawed, not just by being too melancholy, which is a legitimate character defect, but also by making too many mistakes even when in his highly trained, experienced, and capable assassin/spy mode, as when he takes too much time torturing two mercenaries for information or doesn’t think to use Motley the Witted crow to help find Bee or in the middle of an important mission takes drugs he knows will unpredictably leave him dysfunctional. Worse, after everything that's happened in the first trilogy and the second trilogy so far, Fitz is still wanting to go off on his own! By getting his traumatic memories back inside himself at the end of the Tawny Man Trilogy, he was made whole. Hasn't he learned anything? He should assemble his team and sail the Fool et al to Clerres. Instead, here he is again trying to sneak off alone because “I always fail the people I love the most.” Finally, it takes groaningly too long for Fitz to understand the identity of the Fool’s “son.” I figured it out halfway through the first book, but it’s only clearly revealed about halfway through this one, and it’s not enough for Hobb to have the Fool say, “I explain things quite clearly, but if it's not what you expect to hear, you set it aside,” or for Fitz to say, “Of all the people I could lie to, I’d always been best at lying to myself.” Luckily, although too late in coming, the explanation about Bee’s parentage is moving and nice. Another problem with the novel is that Hobb employs fantastic things too inconsistently to serve the needs of her plot. With the Skill-pillars, already plot-convenient items that enable you to teleport great distances in an instant, she keeps people inside them for as little or as much time as she wants for her plot, as when she has Fitz and Chade enter one and come out a day and a half later. Sometimes she has a mysterious voice talk to a person going through the pillars and sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she makes the mind of a person passing through unravel in the Skill stream and sometimes she doesn't. And take the Wolf Father who in the first book and this one gives Bee support and advice, telling her not to let her captors know her age or literacy or prophetic dream ability. Why then does he not warn her when she runs into a mind-controlled mercenary? Because Hobb doesn’t want Bee to escape her captors yet! And then there are the prophetic Dreams of Bee and the Fool, which permit Hobb at her discretion to reveal certain things that will happen in the future rather than everything or other things. And I miss Bee’s voice and character! A great new character in Fool’s Assassin here she’s reduced to a kidnapping victim and narrates only seven of 38 chapters. Hobb stops Bee’s narration, which was one of the best things in the first book, to make us (along with Fitz et al) think that she’s been lost forever in Skill-pillar transit, when I don’t believe for a second that that’s what happened. Hasn’t Fitz been lost for a month while using the Skill-pillars? Doesn’t he know that one of the Servants can change perception in an area so people might miss signs of Bee’s having passed through a Skill-pillar? Isn’t it possible that Bee might appear from the Skill-Pillar later or that she’s already exited from it? Despite its flaws, the novel caught me. It’s a good, if not pleasurable, middle book of a trilogy, bridging the first and third while being full of suspense, humor, and strong emotions. View all my reviews
Fool's Assassin by Robin Hobb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Epic Domestic Fantasy, Or a Father and Daughter Try to Understand Each Other Book one of the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy, Fool’s Assassin (2014), begins at Withywoods, the country estate where Prince FitzChivalry Farseer is living incognito in the guise of the common-born Holder Tom Badgerlock, with his wife and childhood sweetheart Molly, two of her sons by Burrich, and Fitz’ stepmother Patience. Fitz is 47 and Molly 50. “It was nearly eight years that Molly had been my wife. It was almost ten years since I’d killed anyone. Almost ten years since I’d last seen the Fool.” Fitz has occasionally been assisting the court at Buckkeep with his unique abilities and gifts, including being an experienced assassin and spy and possessing strong amounts of Skill and Wit magics, but only a handful of people know his true identity. Where is the Fool? He remains seemingly out of Fitz’ life and present only in his memories. At the end of the previous Tawny Man Trilogy, the Fool decided that now that Fitz and he, the white prophet and his catalyst, had set the world in a better path by ensuring the survival of dragons, if they stayed together, they might undo everything. Fitz is still hurt by the separation. As the previous trilogy started with Fitz slowly losing someone he deeply loves to age, his bonded wolf Nighteyes, here Molly is aging, and Fitz fears that she’s developing dementia. Thanks to some too strong Skill healing in the past, Fitz doesn’t age much, retaining the physique of his thirties and rapidly healing wounds, so he grows a beard to try to appear to grow older with Molly. During the Withywoods Winterfest with which the new trilogy begins, there are warning signs: a mysterious girl tries to give Fitz a message but is made to wait, three ersatz minstrels (imperceptible to the Wit by which Fitz can sense any living creature) show up uninvited, and Molly has an alarming fainting fit. And then during the lively festivities the fake entertainers and the messenger vanish, leaving traces of blood. Fitz organizes a search of the Manor (during which he realizes that he's enjoying this action and wanting to kill someone), but failing to find any victims or malefactors, he lets the matter drop. As he tells us ominously, “Years later, I would marvel at my stupidity. How could I not have known? For years I had waited and longed for a message from the Fool. And when finally it came, I had not received it.” The highly trained and observant assassin and spy marveling at his own stupidity does not justify Hobb’s disappointing tendency to sometimes make her characters (especially Fitz) unbelievably obtuse. On the plus side, for the first time, even as we are losing her, I started to like Molly and to appreciate Fitz’ great love for her. The moments between Molly and Fitz in the early chapters are devastating. To compensate, Hobb introduces via an unexpected and strange birth a great new character in Bee Badgerlock/Farseer. A tiny pale girl, she looks three years younger than she is and is thought to be simple but is brilliant, observant, intelligent, empathetic, lonely, naïve, self-centered, humorous, serious, and different. She also has Wit and Skill magics and the ability to have prophetic Dreams. For the first time in her Farseer trilogies, Hobb has another voice (Bee) narrate chapters alternating with Fitz, and one of the pleasures of this novel is getting the different perspectives of father and daughter on the same events and people. Rather than quests abroad, this book focuses on Fitz’s attempts to manage his country estate Withywoods while dealing with grief, raising an unusual daughter and putting up (with) two nearly adult unwanted bastards. Almost the entire story takes place at home, and there are only a few scenes of violent action. Nevertheless, the story is a page turner, because Hobb is so good at depicting characters and their relationships with each other. Bee has a winning sense of (often self-directed) humor: “My shorn hair stood up like the stubble in a harvested field. I looked more like a serving boy than our serving boys did.” She is subject to some sublime moments: “Time had been a limitless ocean, spreading out in every direction, and I had been a seabird, free to wheel and flit from one moment to a thousand other possibilities. Now I was mired in a tiny puddle, struggling to experience even one second fully, blinded to the future consequences of any action I might take. I stopped and stood and let life happen around me.” The evolving, fraught relationship between Fitz and Bee is poignant, as father and daughter struggle to learn how to live with and trust each other: “An assassin flinched and turned his scrutiny on the small girl. For a moment I didn’t recognize her. I struggled to find my way back to being her father.” “My father, I quickly saw, was not the man I had thought he was. The lies and deceptions cloaked and covered him in so many layers that it woke fear in me.” “Like a worm slowly eating into an apple, the knowledge burrowed in and hollowed my heart. She did not grow, or laugh or smile. Bee would never be the child I had imagined. The worst part was that I had already given my heart to that imaginary child, and it was so terribly hard to forgive Bee for not being her.” “I hate it when you lie. You know that other children will fear me. And I know when they hate me. It’s not something I pretend. It’s real. Don’t lie to me to make me think that I’m the one who is judging them badly. Lies are bad, no matter who tells them. Mama put up with it from you, but I shan’t.” “Perhaps if she was put out of my influence in the area of her education, I could refrain from raising her as I had been raised. Burning bodies by moonlight, and fighting with knives. Oh, well done, Fitz. Well done. And yet, in a dim corner of my mind, a sage old wolf opined that the smallest cub was the one that needed the sharpest teeth.” Unfortunately, Hobb underuses Nettle, under-develops FitzVigilant, and makes Shun unbelievably repulsive (and repeatedly negatively compares her to a cat). Worst is her tendency to make her plot go by making Fitz too obtuse. For example, he discovers that he has to find the Fool’s “son,” but although this reader (no capable assassin spy like Fitz!) figures out the identity of said son based on obvious clues halfway through the novel, Fitz remains frustratingly obtuse about it, which smacks of plot contrivance. Sure, he’s grieving and busy, but Hobb makes him unbelievably dull about too many key things. Not to mention how he deals with a dirty “beggar” holding Bee at one point. The ending of the novel disappointed me, felt contrived, exemplified Hobb’s nearly sadistic treatment of her heroes, and made me dread the prospect of having to read the next two books in the trilogy. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
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