Fantasy Challenge #2: Assassin's Apprentice, Robin Hobb
Assassin's Apprentice was not unknown to me when I picked it as one of my dozen fantasy novels for this year's reading challenge. I knew that it was popular - the first book in a best-selling fantasy trilogy, in fact. I knew that Robin Hobb was a pen-name, used by Megan Lindholm (whose real name is actually Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden). I'd also heard that Lindholm, after ten fantasy novels, found it difficult to sell her next project as her sales had been declining. So she used the pen-name Robin Hobb instead. And Assassin's Apprentice, her first book under that name, went on to become a best-seller. (A more cynical person than myself might have suggested that the perceived gender of Robin Hobb played a part...)
I've no idea how true how that is. Certainly some authors are deemed "category killers", and subsequently find publication easier under a pseudonym. It seems more likely that Lindholm used the pseudonym simply to distinguish Assassin's Apprentice and its sequels from her earlier work as it was a very different type of fantasy. Nonetheless, it did feed into my perception of the book...
Which was that Assassin's Apprentice was a stereotypical secondary-world fantasy.
Except. The book is written in the first person - which is not typical of secondary-world fantasies. But it has a map - which is typical of secondary-world fantasies. I am, I admit, not a big fan of maps in books. I think they're unnecessary... although I confess there's a childish amusement to be gained looking up on them the places mentioned in the story. Also, the map in Assassin's Apprentice did not bode well. I complained last month about Edding's use of names in Pawn of Prophecy (see here). But at least he made an effort. Hobb instead chose to give the various parts of her fantasyland the most boring names ever - Near Isles, Mountain Kingdom, Neat Bay, South Cove, Cold River, Blue Lake... The characters' names are no better: King Shrewd, Prince Chivalry, Prince Verity, Lady Patience... (It doesn't help that Verity is a female name.)
(Rest of post on It Doesn't Have To Be Right...)
I've no idea how true how that is. Certainly some authors are deemed "category killers", and subsequently find publication easier under a pseudonym. It seems more likely that Lindholm used the pseudonym simply to distinguish Assassin's Apprentice and its sequels from her earlier work as it was a very different type of fantasy. Nonetheless, it did feed into my perception of the book...
Which was that Assassin's Apprentice was a stereotypical secondary-world fantasy.
Except. The book is written in the first person - which is not typical of secondary-world fantasies. But it has a map - which is typical of secondary-world fantasies. I am, I admit, not a big fan of maps in books. I think they're unnecessary... although I confess there's a childish amusement to be gained looking up on them the places mentioned in the story. Also, the map in Assassin's Apprentice did not bode well. I complained last month about Edding's use of names in Pawn of Prophecy (see here). But at least he made an effort. Hobb instead chose to give the various parts of her fantasyland the most boring names ever - Near Isles, Mountain Kingdom, Neat Bay, South Cove, Cold River, Blue Lake... The characters' names are no better: King Shrewd, Prince Chivalry, Prince Verity, Lady Patience... (It doesn't help that Verity is a female name.)
(Rest of post on It Doesn't Have To Be Right...)