After more than a decade and seven intervening novels, Robin Hobb returns to her best known and most beloved character: FitzChivalry Farseer, ‘star’ of The Farseer and The Tawny Man trilogies. Sure she dabbled in the same world with the Rain Wilds books, but it is Fitz / Tom Badgerlock (Badgerlock is the name he assumes for much of The Tawny Man trilogy) and the Six Duchies where Hobb gained her strongest following. Hobb put the royal bastard through a great deal of turmoil in six books and if Fool’s Assassin is any indication, then indications are even more arduous journey awaits him in the Fitz and the Fool trilogy.
Years have passed since readers were last privy Fitz’s thoughts, he is now married to his boyhood love Molly, his daughter Nettle (whom Molly’s first husband Burrich raised as his own and is now very much enmeshed in the life of Buckkeep court) has appointed him the Holder of the Withywoods Estate she’s been bequeathed. In short, life for the man many know as Tom Badgerlock is far more bucolic than the courtly intrigue in which he spent much of his life embroiled. Then one Winterfest, a traveling group of minstrels and performers arrive; these strangers are very different indeed and bear little resemblance to any folk to have passed through Withywoods as far as any of the staff and people can remember. Life soon returns to its leisurely pace for Molly and Fitz until Molly boldly proclaims she is pregnant. This is something she and Fitz always wanted for many of the children she bore were from Burrich, her first husband and the man who served as a father figure to Fitz.
The pregnancy is not normal, to say the very least. For starters, Molly is beyond normal child-bearing years, and the pregnancy is so long and protracted – not months but years. She barely shows and it gets to the point that Fitz, Molly’s daughter Nettle and the other family members think Molly is delusional. Because the narrative is told through Fitz’s very limited first person perspective, it is easy to empathize with his frustrations about this supposedly imaginary pregnancy. But, eventually, Molly does give birth to small girl, the smallest child she ever birthed and far smaller than would be typically healthy for a baby. But Fitz uses his Skill (a type of magic that allows a person to enter the mind and essentially soul of another) and ensures his wife that the baby girl is healthy.
Much of the novel from this point deals with Fitz as a father to this new child, a child who appears healthy but much smaller than any child should. This young girl, whom Molly and Fitz come to name Bee, is not very communicative and is very withdrawn. She shirks away from Fitz and bonds immediately to Molly. Because of her diminutive size and silence, she is thought by many of Withywoods to be mentally slow and damaged. As the novel progresses, Hobb conveys the emotional turmoil a parent might experience with a child who is so out of what is considered normal.
All the while, Fitz longs to hear from his long-time companion, The Fool, as he was known in The Farseer, Lord Golden as he was known in The Tawny Man Trilogy. Fitz and the Fool share a bond stronger than friends, deeper than soul-mates. The Fool was the White Prophet and Fitz was his catalyst in bringing about a prophecy they thought helped to prevent very bad things from happening. Since those events were brought about, years have passed and the most Fitz has heard about his old friend is that dangerous people have been searching for the supposed son of the Fool.
I come to this novel as a very big fan of the previous novels featuring FitzChivalry Farseer so reading Hobb’s prose/Fitz’s voice was most welcome. It was akin to chatting with a friend I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed over the years. Fitz’s internal dialogue drops enough hints about his past life with Chade, the Fool, Buckkeep, and Molly that it might not be too off-putting to readers who aren’t familiar with those stories. Furthermore, a reader approaching this book without the foreknowledge of what came before in Fitz’s life might be able to read the novel as a story about a man with a haunted past seeking to keep that past as far away as possible.
I suspect this novel might be a bit divisive for readers, if a few twitter conversations I had can be insightful. When examined from afar, not very much happens in the novel over the course of the many wonderful words Hobb spins into the story. As such, the pacing of this novel is deliberate and because of Hobb’s delightful prose I never felt as if the events needed to be moving at a different pace. That said, the only elements that I found a little problematic is how certain events were recounted multiple times in Fitz’s internal dialogue with himself. Those were the few spots for me that slightly impeded the lovely stroll through our narrators’ voices.
Yes…narrators (plural) because there’s also a switch in perspective in the latter half of the novel to Fitz’s daughter Bee that some may find jarring. Well, readers should find it jarring because switching out of one character’s head, when such an intimate view is provided will be jarring. The switch worked very well for me, and I found this new perspective very engaging as the voice was different enough from that which readers of FitzChivalry were accustomed, but rooted in very similar sensibilities.
What this novel turns out to be is multifaceted. On one hand, we’ve got a man in Fitzchivalry / Tom Badgerlock looking to finally have a more relaxed life after such a troublesome, harrowing life. There’s also the element of father and child relationship, and perhaps a child of special needs. Furthermore, longing for a past friend takes up much of the emotional weight of the novel. What Hobb does with the dueling narrators is provide a heartbreaking, powerful, emotional insight into both parent and child which illustrates just how limited each perspective is, despite FitzChivalry struggling to hold back the psychic projections his daughter can absorb so powerfully. Bee’s avoidance of many gazes, especially her father’s is seen at times, as a rejection from Fitz. There’s a wall between the two characters Bee attempts to see through as she reads some of Fitz’s old journals. Despite the invisible barrier between the two, and some of the negative emotions each character conveys (frustration, fear), Hobb conveys the love parent and child share for each other in both heartwarming and heartbreaking fashion.
The novel ends on a bit of a cliffhanger with some characters reunited and other characters separated setting up the conflict that will likely fuel the remaining books in the trilogy. I was a bit wary of reading the book because The Soldier Son trilogy didn’t exactly work for me and I’ve not read the Rain Wilds books despite how much I thoroughly enjoyed The Liveship Traders. Here in Fool’s Assassin, I had a few minor issues as well (aforementioned repetition of details, some willful holding back of information to move the plot forward, a major reveal somewhat obvious), but was more than happy with the whole of the novel and can’t wait to see where Hobb takes the story.
Highly Recommended
© 2014 Rob H. Bedford
Published by Del Rey / Hardcover ISBN 978-0-5533-9242-5
August 2014 / 688 Pages
http://www.robinhobb.com
Review copy courtesy Del Rey Books
Not reading this, because I want to read the book when it comes out. But I did read your last line. But I knew you’d say that. 🙂