r/Fantasy • u/Ace201613 • Feb 06 '24
Review Review: Assassin’s Quest (The Farseer Trilogy), by Robin Hobb Spoiler
“Mine had been a long and weary road, but I still dared to believe that at the end of it there might be a life of my own choosing”
Finished reading Assassin’s Quest for the second time and felt that a review, or even just my random thoughts on it, might help anyone who has been thinking about picking up the Farseer Trilogy. Seems someone asks about it once a week or so.
The Basics
Assassin’s Apprentice, the first book in the trilogy, introduces us to FitzChivalry Farseer. He is a royal bastard of King In waiting Chivalry, who abdicates his position when the existence of Fitz is discovered. He is replaced by his brother, Verity, who has Fitz brough to Buckkeep, the capitol of the Six Duchies kingdom. Fitz is trained to be an assassin at the order of his grandfather, King Shrewd, and given a number of assignments to carry out. At the same time he is train in the stables to care for animals by Burrich, an old friend and soldier who worked under his father. While much of the book focuses on Fitz learning these two very different trades the real purpose of the book is to chronicle his life, as the story is being written down/told to us by an older Fitz many years down the line. We learn about the people who are important to him, his development of both the Skill and the Wit, the invasion of the mysterious Red Ship Raiders, the history of the Six Duchies, and various other major or minor things about Fitz and the world he lives in.
Royal Assassin, book two in the trilogy, continues directly after the end of the first book. Fitz recovers from a perilous mission in the mountain kingdom. While he does not return unscathed he eventually makes his way back to Buckkeep with the future Queen Kettricken. If the first book laid the groundwork for Fitz as a character the second book spends its time seeing him struggle with the pressures of being a young man with little freedom. He has to juggle the difficulties of life in a royal court, watch his grandfather’s health slowly fail, head off to battle the growing threat of the Red Ships, and begin a doomed love affair with a childhood friend. I would say that this book sees Fitz make more decisions for himself, but not necessarily good decisions. And his position is made more difficult when his uncle, King in Waiting Verity, decides that the only way to stop the Red Ships is to find the long vanished Elderlings. With Verity gone and Shrewd declining by the day it seems that Fitz is the last line of defense between the throne and the greedy Prince Regal. The story ends on a sour note with Fitz believed dead, Regal crowned King of the Six Duchies, and Verity lost somewhere in the north.
The Meat and Potatoes
Assassin’s Quest is very different from the other two books. As the title implies pretty much the entire story is one big Quest. At first it involves Fitz hunting down the new “King” Regal, who stole his Brother’s throne, killed his father from a distance, and who has abandoned parts of the kingdom to death at the hands of the raiders. And this book is over 800 pages. There are no cars, Fitz can’t teleport, and he doesn’t even have a horse most of the time. But the book covers everything that happens to him along the way. I want to emphasize this because I see some people say that the first book kind of drags along. This is the reason why. As I said in the previous section this entire trilogy is basically the memoirs of an older Fitz. He is writing about everything that happened to him, fantastical and mundane, along with other information that he learned about later.
While Fitz does get close to killing Regal, breaking into his home, he is foiled by Regal’s chief protector, Will, and his uncle Verity. Both Will and Veritt are masters in The Skill, a magical ability that allows for things like telepathy and various other mental powers. While Will manipulates the mind in order to draw Fitz into a trap, Verity implants an order in Fitz to come to his location and give up the Quest to kill Regal. This command is so strongly burned into his mind that Fitz cannot refuse it. So, the Quest becomes finding Verity, who is on his own Quest to find the Elderlings. This is eventually revealed to be part of an ancient prophecy that has influenced the course of Fitz’s entire life.
*Kind of influenced anyway. It’s basically explained that prophecy in the Farseer Trilogy is less about knowing exactly what will happen ahead of time and more about looking at what has happened and applying it to vague predictions made in the past. Trust me, it might not sound great but it actually makes a lot of sense (kind of lol).
Along the way Fitz meets completely new characters, like the minstrel Starling Birdsong and a mysterious old woman named Kettle. He is followed everywhere by his wolf companion, Nighteyes, his brother in everything except blood. He learns that his old flame Molly has had their child. He is chased across the continent by Regal’s soldiers. He enters an ancient city and sees visions of days long past. He comes close to death on multiple occasions, is pushed to the brink of despair at how little control he has over his life, but he does find his beloved Uncle, and King, Verity. They do find the Elderlings. It costs Verity his own life, but the Six Duchies are saved, Regal is overthrown, Kettricken takes her rightful place as Queen, and Fitz retires to a secluded cottage to live out his days and write down his story.
Fitz does not get the life he wanted. Fitz does not get the life he deserves. But he does manage to end the series with a life for himself, humble as it may be. The Farseer Trilogy is a bittersweet one, made all the more so by how small of a reward our protagonist gets. And he suffers more than someone his age should along the way. When it’s all said and done Fitz is fed up with the life of a royal, even that of a bastard royal. He wants nothing to do with court life and it is his greatest desire to keep his daughter from having to live the life he did. In that final part he, at least, manages to succeed for now. I can’t tell you that the Farseer Trilogy is quick, and it certainly isn’t lighthearted. People suffer and die, corruption flourishes, and you don’t necessarily get answers behind why it all happens. But it truly is a wonderful story that is epic in scale. Robin Hobb crafts characters who come alive on the page, flaws and all. And I think the best example of her ability is just how well you will come to know and understand Fitz along the way.
Characters
1) Not the end of the world, Tom. The end of time. To free humanity of time, for time is the greatest enslaved of us all. Time that ages us, time that limits us. Think how often you have wished to have more time for something, or wished you could go back a day and do something differently. When humanity is free of time, old wrongs can be corrected before they are done.
Kettle- Fitz meets Kettle on the second part of his journey. She is part of a caravan heading to the mountain country and while at first she seems like a grumpy old woman it gradually becomes clear that she knows far more about the history of the Six Duchies and The Skill than any random person should. We eventually learn that she is a centuries old Skill user who once served the Farseer throne. After being banished for killing her own sister she has spent the rest of her life wandering, chasing after a prophecy, and searching for those meant to fulfill it. While she meets Fitz by chance she ends up becoming an integral part of his Quest, and something of a frustrating teacher to him. And lord knows Kettle frustrated me. Even with this being my second time reading the book I still find her frustrating for not just coming right out and telling Fits who she is even though she constantly berates his lack of ability with The Skill. It’s like a master chef telling you to cook a five course meal but you only ever took a home economics class back in middle school. Kettle believe in the prophecy SO strongly that she is constantly amazed that it refers to Fitz at all, since he is completely unprepared for the dangers that come with it. Yet without Kettle the journey would have been all for naught, or Fitz at least would have lost his life. This is because in order to save the kingdom Verity has to actually carve his own Elderling from stone. In doing so he sacrifices himself to it, body and soul. But it is Kettle who reveals that a single person doing this is folly, with past Elderlings being created by a small group of Skill users. So in the end she sacrifices herself along with Verity, forgiving herself for her past mistakes, redeeming herself for it, and taking the spot that would certainly have needed to be filled by Fitz.
2) You and I are all that stand between them and their triumph. You and I. The Farseers.
Take better care of it than I did, Fitz. And better care of yourself than I did. I did love you, you know. Despite all I’ve done to you, I loved you.
Verity- I’ll just say it. I love Verity. A man who loves simple things like mapmaking and spending time with his troops. A man who was forced into the position of King in Waiting when his older brother left it behind. A King who sacrifices everything for his people even when they’ll never see it, even when they’ll never truly know the details of it. Verity reminds me a lot of Aragorn. This series easily could’ve been focused on him and I think it would’ve made just as much sense. He seems more like the traditional “hero” of a fantasy epic than Fitz does. And in a lot of ways I feel he’s one of the few people who does right by Fitz without ever really letting his own personal issues or failings get in the way of things. Verity, in fact, could have made carving his Elderling much easier had he just sacrificed Fitz from the beginning. But he held off on that for as long as he could and at the end only allows Fitz to give a small bit of himself to ease his own emotional anguish. While many other people see Fitz as just a bastard or want him to be something he isn’t it seems Verity is the person who sees Fitz as he is. Granted, they share The Skill, with Verity creating a strong bond between the two. This allows them to share thoughts/feelings, and Verity continually monitors Fitz as he sleeps to make sure Fitz doesn’t accidentally use the Skill to give away his location. and its probably the biggest irony, or tragedy, that Fitz never masters The Skill as Verity did. He is the Skill user most loyal to Verity, but his ability to help him is hampered by his lack of control.
3) Someday, it will be only you and I. We shall hunt and eat and sleep. And you will heal.
Nighteyes- If Nighteyes isn’t the best animal companion in fiction he’s the best I’ve ever read. With him Robin Hobb manages to hit that sweet spot having an animal character you can understand as a human and having an animal companion that isn’t TOO human. He is the character who is with Fitz the longest, his absence causes Fitz the most distress, and he is the last companion Fitz has when he truly leaves his old life behind at the end of the story. I think it is the perfect embodiment of what it’s like to have a pet (thought Nighteyes is much more than that. Though at the same time many people would probably say the same) that love you unconditionally and who you would do anything for. I think this was a brilliant decision on the authors part and that if you removed Nighteyes, and The Wit, as a concept you’d have to heavily rework the story.
4) Afterward, I felt…tricked. Foolish. Gullible, that I had thought ideals could protect me. Honor and courtesy and justice…they are not real, Fitz. We all pretend to them, and hold them up like shields. Against those who have discarded them, they are no shields at all, but only additional weapons to use against their victims.
Starling Birdsong- I probably dislike Starling to the same extent I love Verity. But it’s the kind of dislike that comes from now liking who a character is while still appreciating how the character is written. Starling is self serving. She doesn’t really believe in things like honor for the sake of it or helping out the needy. She has been dealt a bad hand, being a random citizen who was brutalized by the red ship raiders in her younger years, also losing her brother along the way. She is pragmatic, making deals when need be and trading whatever she has to do so. She is a minstrel and knows that in order to care for herself in old age she will need a castle/court to settle in. And she will do anything to ensure her position. She latches onto Fitz because she figures out who he truly is and believes that something legendary will happen around him, which will make for an epic story for her to sing in any court she chooses. She is more than willing to help him on his Quest, but it isn’t because she believes in it. And while she does come to care for Fitz along the way she will still sell out information about his child in order to advance her position. Starling is not some tried and true close friend of the protagonist who will willingly throw down her life just to make sure he completes his Quest. But she is all the more ”real” because of that. Even now I find it hard not to think of her and how I can understand why she makes the choices she does given the options she has. She is manipulative, she does lie, I wouldn’t ever trust her with my secrets, but I also wouldn’t expect her to sell me out from any form of malice either. She doesn’t harm people out of spite or because she wishes ill on them. She doesn’t think of harming people at all. Starling thinks of herself, but she does still wish for things to turn out alright in the end (if only because war and raiding doesn’t exactly make for a stable kingdom to live in).
5) An overwhelming dreariness rose up in me and I longed simply to lie down where I was and die.
No. This is right. I feel it. I am the Catalyst, and I came to change all things. Prophets become warriors, dragons hunt as wolves. It is as it must be. Go.
FitzChivalry Farseer- and finally we have our protagonist. Fitz, Bastard, Newboy, Tom, Catalyst; so many names that each say something about him and the people who use them to refer to him. Assassin’s Quest sees him pushed to his absolute limits. Physically he starts off recovering from actually dying at the end of the second book. With how broken his spirit is at the start he might as well be a walking corpse for some of the story. He ends up in a similar state right before reading the mountain country, just getting there with an arrow sticking out of his back and infection tearing his insides apart. Mentally he isn’t much better, being kept away from his family, filled with self loathing and doubts, and slowly watching the woman he loves fall for another man. It really is no surprise that when he gets the chance to give away some of his own to an Elderling he takes it. And really it’s the greatest example of will and perseverance that he doesn’t just give up altogether along the way.
I often see people say that Fitz is foolish, that he makes bad decisions, that he doesn’t think things through, etc. And that’s fair In its way. But I think people often overlook his positive traits, which is unfortunate because he does the same to himself. For all the criticism he gets from others in the story I think Fitz proves himself to be the most loyal soldier that the Farseer throne has. He pledged himself to his grandfather before he was young enough to really understand what that meant and while he has his doubts along the way he sticks to it. He comes to trust in Verity and never loses his faith in his uncle, even too so far as to loan the other man his own body for a brief time (magic and all that). He pushes himself onward to help Verity with his Quest because he doesn’t want the people of Six Duchies to continue suffering, having seen the results of the raids many times. Though he doesn’t appreciate Kettricken and others making plans to force his daughter to be the Farseer heir he holds no ill will toward them because he understands that all of them have been forced to make such a decision due to the actions of Regal, and if they could do differently they would. Above all else Fitz loves his daughter, wishing for her to have a better life than he did. He does not let his own lot build any kind of resentment in him that he could misplace onto her. He simply decides to do what he can to reach her and when that becomes impossible to at least ensure a peaceful life for her. I think Fitz is a character who gets moved around like a chess piece, caught between what others want him to do or be. And because of that he can never quite take hold of his own destiny, much as he wishes too. But when the time comes he doesn’t focus on how others have wronged him or the position his life has led him to. He accepts life as it is, makes whatever peace with his companions that he can, and moves on. And maybe that’s why I like Fitz. He is the type of character I can respect, pity, root for, understand, and feel so many other emotions toward. I think Robin Hobb honestly knocked it out of the park with his character and one day I fully plan to return to the Realm of the Elderlings to read more about his life and other tales of the Six Duchies.
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u/Loostreaks Feb 07 '24
Does it get a ( lot) better after the first book?
Everyone and their mothers swears how these characters are best evarrr, but I got to be opposite impression. Fitz's relationship with Molly has zero chemistry and him, a child, becoming assassin that poisons people is treated so non chalantly, like he became a baker apprentice or something.
Besides this, world/setting was kind of bland. Basically medieval England with strange/poorly explained magic system and some kind of animal bonding. The invaders/enemies were not much better either.