REVIEW - ASSASSIN'S QUEST
In the end it is a very sad tale.. and indeed one that does not seem nearly its eight-hundred pages long - but it is also a tale exceptionally well-told. When reading a trilogy one always has suspicions about how it will end, and must weigh those carefully against how they desire it to end. The quality of Robin Hobb's storytelling does not wane in this final book but the maturity, reality and grief of the story are overwhelming compared to the first two books. You really do feel the strain the events of Fitz' life seem to take on him. The books begin with the voice of a nameless narrator - that of an presumably old man - recalling the eventful tale of his youth. You wonder how on earth he is able to recall so much detail with such accuracy, at the age of eighty or ninety. It is only once you approach the end of the story that you realise that Fitz has barely lived four decades, yet his body and mind have experienced the trials of several lifetimes.
It is difficult to make any conclusive remarks about Hobb's exploration of magics like The Wit and The Skill, as more can probably be learned by reading her other books set in the same universe, but the nature of both remains very mysterious. Early in Assassin's Quest, Fitz meets other Wit users (or 'Old Blood'), who offer to teach him more about this mysterious magic, and although he does not initially take them up on this offer I surmised that he would journey back. The eventual, very brief description of this encounter left a lot to be desired. The Skill was explored much more thoroughly than The Wit and even then a plethora of mysteries still surround both. 'The prophecy' storyline seemed weak at first, but as the story progresses you appreciate the subtlety with which Hobb has woven the significance of it in. Although chronologically The Liveship Traders is the next trilogy set in the same world, I am all too eager to skip ahead to The Tawny Man - the trilogy chronicling the Fool's life, in order to learn more about his existence as The White Prophet.
Hobb's timing is again perfect. Labouring detail into sections just long enough that you appreciate the character's frustration at the length of their journey, or delight over a warm meal, but always managing to skip ahead at all the right moments. The only part of this book which frustrated me was the final chapter, which was written much in the same style as an epilogue, only deceivingly titled 'Chapter Forty'. I do not mind epilogues, but I like to know what to expect in the final chapter of a book - more story for you to ponder over? Or some conclusive information about the characters and their fate? These writing styles serve two very different purposes. Perhaps it is merely my romantic desire for a happy ending, but the book did leave me feeling a little cheated. This does not seem to come of any laziness of the author - Instead it seems the anguish of the characters is so well communicated that you end up feeling all their pain and dissatisfaction too heartily
One sign of an excellent story is that it will leave you craving to know more about the setting and the characters, and I certainly feel that about this series! Although the final chapters are sombre on a personal level for many of the characters, the Mountain people's notion of 'Sacrifice' truly comes to be understood by the reader. At the end of Royal Assassin (the second book) I could see a strong parallel between Fitz and Chade's characters, and marveled at the way Hobb had developed Fitz's story so that he too would become a shadowy and anonymous assassin. But I was wrong in even this prediction. Despite not liking the way things ended for many of the characters, there were very few plot twists which I was able to guess successfully, making Hobb's writing an intriguing delight.
It is difficult to make any conclusive remarks about Hobb's exploration of magics like The Wit and The Skill, as more can probably be learned by reading her other books set in the same universe, but the nature of both remains very mysterious. Early in Assassin's Quest, Fitz meets other Wit users (or 'Old Blood'), who offer to teach him more about this mysterious magic, and although he does not initially take them up on this offer I surmised that he would journey back. The eventual, very brief description of this encounter left a lot to be desired. The Skill was explored much more thoroughly than The Wit and even then a plethora of mysteries still surround both. 'The prophecy' storyline seemed weak at first, but as the story progresses you appreciate the subtlety with which Hobb has woven the significance of it in. Although chronologically The Liveship Traders is the next trilogy set in the same world, I am all too eager to skip ahead to The Tawny Man - the trilogy chronicling the Fool's life, in order to learn more about his existence as The White Prophet.
Hobb's timing is again perfect. Labouring detail into sections just long enough that you appreciate the character's frustration at the length of their journey, or delight over a warm meal, but always managing to skip ahead at all the right moments. The only part of this book which frustrated me was the final chapter, which was written much in the same style as an epilogue, only deceivingly titled 'Chapter Forty'. I do not mind epilogues, but I like to know what to expect in the final chapter of a book - more story for you to ponder over? Or some conclusive information about the characters and their fate? These writing styles serve two very different purposes. Perhaps it is merely my romantic desire for a happy ending, but the book did leave me feeling a little cheated. This does not seem to come of any laziness of the author - Instead it seems the anguish of the characters is so well communicated that you end up feeling all their pain and dissatisfaction too heartily
One sign of an excellent story is that it will leave you craving to know more about the setting and the characters, and I certainly feel that about this series! Although the final chapters are sombre on a personal level for many of the characters, the Mountain people's notion of 'Sacrifice' truly comes to be understood by the reader. At the end of Royal Assassin (the second book) I could see a strong parallel between Fitz and Chade's characters, and marveled at the way Hobb had developed Fitz's story so that he too would become a shadowy and anonymous assassin. But I was wrong in even this prediction. Despite not liking the way things ended for many of the characters, there were very few plot twists which I was able to guess successfully, making Hobb's writing an intriguing delight.
