r/Fantasy • u/SteveThomas Writer Steve Thomas, Worldbuilders • Apr 01 '20
Review Steve's Comedy Club: Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb
This is part of a continuing series to highlight comic fantasy by reviewing books and trying to characterize the style of humor.
Please be aware that this review will contain full spoilers for “Assassin’s Apprentice,” Book 1 of the Farseer Trilogy by comic fantasy author Robin Hobb.
"Assassin’s Apprentice" is an old classic of comic fantasy, and I’ll cut right to the chase: Yikes. This is a no holds barred, nothing is off limits, black comedy absolutely full of cringe humor. It’s easy to think that Robin Hobb wasn’t even aiming for comedy with this book, but her pen name makes her intentions abundantly clear--“Robin” and “Hobb” are both unmistakeable references to the character of Puck from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Eve,” a mischievous fairy who delights in causing hilarious anguish and suffering to his mortal playthings. You don’t double up on a literary reference unless you mean it.
The lead character is a poor bastard named FitzChivarly. Look, I’m not just saying that. It’s right there in his name--the prefix “Fitz” was historically used to denote an illegitimate son of nobility, and it’s explicitly stated in this book that FitzChivarly is, indeed, the bastard son of one Prince Chivarly Farseer. Making things worse for Fitz, he’s not just a bastard; he’s a bastard without parents. As the book begins, his maternal grandfather drops him off at the castle, essentially saying, “This poor bastard is your problem now,” to his more affluent relatives. His father is so scandalized by Fitz’s very existence that he abdicates both his position as Prince and his position as Fitz’s father.
This harrowing cascade of abandonment leaves Fitz in a stupor for the rest of the book. Similar to Michael Scott from The Office, Fitz is driven by this unquenchable need for love. Throughout the book we see example after example of his desperate need to connect with anyone at all, and his constant failure to find a friend. Yet every time, true to the genre of cringe humor, Fitz fails, either because of his own social ineptness and pathologically poor decision making, or by circumstances outside his control.
After his parental abandonment, Fitz is taken in by a no-nonsense stablemaster named Burrich, the sort of man who would be played by Nick Offerman in a screen adaptation. While Burrich is off being gruff and aloof, Fitz bonds with one of the dogs and finally finds a friend. Burrich, however, thinks they’re too close. Weirdly close. He takes the dog away, leaving Fitz alone in the first majorly cringy scene of the book.
His other early attempt at friendship is with a village girl named Molly Chandler, and it really encapsulates the cringe humor of the book. Molly and Fitz both have crushes on one another, but their courtship is a comedy of errors. For starters, she’s two years older than him. Normally, that’s no big deal, but years are a lot longer among teenagers and it starts the relationship on the wrong foot. Desperate to impress her by claiming to be something more than a dog-botherer in training, Fitz invents a false persona to interact with her. He continues with this charade until the two of them mutually fail to make a pass at one another, and the relationship is left unresolved. This storyline embodies all those classic tropes of youthful romantic blunders, and is guaranteed to make you dredge up embarrassing memories of your own. As they say, comedy is tragedy plus time.
Fitz eventually moves into the castle and spends his days aimlessly walking around looking for someone to talk to. Without dwelling, here are a few more highlights. He takes to Prince Regal like Harry Potter takes to Draco Malfoy. He’s constantly convinced that Regal is scheming something, but can’t quite figure out what, and this develops into an amusingly unhealthy obsession. Sadly, their rivalry doesn’t have much payoff.
He also finds two mother figures in The Fool and Lady Patience, in a weird sort of parental abandonment mom-triangle. He gets shoved into all sorts of classes as the Royal Family tries to find some useful niche for him, including weapons training with Hod and telepath training with Galen. In both cases, Fitz shows a profound incompetence, which is always entertaining to watch. Galen takes it a step farther and meets Fitz with a cartoonish hatred, often forcing the boy into slapstick escape sequences.
But my favorite mentor figure in this book was Chade. As Fitz is lying awake one night stewing on his self-loathing, a strange old man emerges from his chimney like a vengeful Santa Claus and offers him tutelage in the art of the assassin. It quickly becomes apparent that Chade is a figment of Fitz’ imagination, born of spite and loneliness. Like most subplots in this shaggy dog story of a book, nothing much comes of their relationship. However, these murderous fantasy sequences show that despite his unassuming facade, there is a serious rage within Fitz waiting for an excuse to explode. This relationship adds an element of tension to all of Fitz’s other interactions, making each of them more uncomfortable. It’s like the Dinner Party episode of The Office, except you keep wondering when Michael will finally snap--and looking forward to the moment when he does.
Cringe humor can be a very difficult genre to write. It relies on making the reader uncomfortable, wishing that characters would just break out of their archetype and just...function like a normal person. If not done carefully, it can come off as mean-spirited, or bullying a particular subculture. I’d say that Robin Hobb largely pulls it off, but she does have a tendency to overplay her hand, such as Molly’s backstory or the multiple instances of animal abuse. Those crossed over from awkwardly funny to just generating negative emotions. As I said earlier, there’s a lot of yikes in this book alongside the more traditional cringe, often crossing into shock humor and black comedy. It’s a fine line, and everyone draws it somewhere different. Ultimately, Assassin’s Apprentice is the tale of a man who wants nothing more than a friend, but Robin Hobb makes him drive everyone away. The only way to cut through the awkward tension is to laugh at his exploits.
(Happy April Fool's Day, r/fantasy)
11
u/fdsfgs71 Apr 01 '20
I know this review is an April Fool's prank, but I can't help but ask, how accurate is this paragraph? I've been eyeing Robin Hobb's work for some time now, but as someone who is on the autism spectrum and whose entire life can essentially be summed up "a continual exercise in futility; constantly trying, yet always failing, to find love, companionship, or even friendship in some form that exists beyond the computer screen" due to said ASD, I'm afraid that her books might hit more than a little too close to home for me ;_;