Book Review: Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb
Title: Assassin's Quest (Farseer Trilogy Book 3)
Author: Robin Hobb
Published: New York: Spectra, 2002 (1997)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 757
Total Page Count: 152,666
Text Number: 446
Read Because: interest in the companion animal trope/continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In this final book, Fitz seeks desperate solutions to Regal's command of the Six Duchies and the Red Ship's ongoing attacks. I remain impressed by how completely I adored this series. Assassin's Quest is higher concept and high fantasy, much longer and with a more significant plot, but the first two books built a solid, character-based foundation which supports that weight. This series has never been perfect, and its conclusion is no exception: new characters crop up without warning, Fitz frequently comes off as dim, and the epilogue threatens to be underwhelming. But with every book, this series has pushed its tropes--the companion animal, the found family with all of its messy and strange intimacies, Fitz's coming of age, hurt/comfort--further, and the end result has a visceral, pit of the belly satisfaction. Within its limitations, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
And the ferret's triumph in the epilogue? It made me put the book down for a solid handful of minutes and just laugh and laugh.
I came to Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy for its bond animals, and it does great things with that trope; its take is unique particularly for the fact that the bond creatures feel like animals, not "could be human if weren't a horse (jk it was human before it was a horse)," and for the way the bond changes both parties, animals gaining a level of sapience, humans adapting to the thought processes and even limitations of their partners.
But what I really took away was the variety of magical intimacies. Fitz and his dogs, certainly. But also Fitz and Prince Verity, whose sustained telepathic bond becomes almost subconscious, the presence of another person inside their minds as familiar as their own inner voice, but always other, comforting but stressful, intimate but exhausting. And the concept of a Skill-coterie, of groups weaving their magic together to strengthen it, to use it in unique ways; groups building intimacy only to physically separate themselves, a web of psychic links and loneliness; the combination of strong magics and intense interpersonal relationships erupting into violence and lifetimes of loss, seen in Kestrel.
I always wished we saw more of coteries in particular, because Fitz is intentionally denied one. He sees them from the outside, learns them in theory, sees every risk, destroys one; he also glimpses their intimacy, but his background makes them impossible. He and audience both are left longing.
Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic fulfills that longing. These books continue to be limited by intended age group, with which I can't quite argueI don't think kids require simplistic books, but these plots are meant to be logical rather than intuitive, so they are straightforward, which spills over to heavy-handed characterization (that last alleviated in the later books by Polyam and Crane). But I'm forever amazed by how rewarding they are. The core cast doesn't have outstanding characterization, but their dynamic is somehow flawless.
Outcasts, banding together to create an intimacy so profound that they don't know if they should call one another friends or siblings! Psychic conversations! Magic-sharing! Magic bleedover, as their bond threatens to overshadow even their individual abilities. Skill-sharing, teaching each other reading and lockpicking, making a quick psychic phonecall for advice. Bickering and being petty even while linked by a profound bond! Risking their lives for one another, precisely because they trust in one another to survive. Falling asleep together in the common room; a cup for each housemate; the absent life-energy sensed through the walls when one of them is away. It's an accidental coterie, and, while the found family aspects are comforting, while the stresses are intentionally external or personalthe group dynamic doesn't go untouched, but isn't itself a source of dangerI enjoy it even more when seen that way: to project onto the dynamic the conflicts of incipient adolescence and adulthood, to imagine how intimacy changes and deepens as the children grow more complex with age, to anticipate troubles within the intimacy itself. And, as result, appreciate the intimacy more.
(And Pierce puts women everywhere! The cast is even female-majority. This is the major downfall of the Farseer books, and can only do good things.)
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Author: Robin Hobb
Published: New York: Spectra, 2002 (1997)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 757
Total Page Count: 152,666
Text Number: 446
Read Because: interest in the companion animal trope/continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In this final book, Fitz seeks desperate solutions to Regal's command of the Six Duchies and the Red Ship's ongoing attacks. I remain impressed by how completely I adored this series. Assassin's Quest is higher concept and high fantasy, much longer and with a more significant plot, but the first two books built a solid, character-based foundation which supports that weight. This series has never been perfect, and its conclusion is no exception: new characters crop up without warning, Fitz frequently comes off as dim, and the epilogue threatens to be underwhelming. But with every book, this series has pushed its tropes--the companion animal, the found family with all of its messy and strange intimacies, Fitz's coming of age, hurt/comfort--further, and the end result has a visceral, pit of the belly satisfaction. Within its limitations, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
And the ferret's triumph in the epilogue? It made me put the book down for a solid handful of minutes and just laugh and laugh.
I came to Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy for its bond animals, and it does great things with that trope; its take is unique particularly for the fact that the bond creatures feel like animals, not "could be human if weren't a horse (jk it was human before it was a horse)," and for the way the bond changes both parties, animals gaining a level of sapience, humans adapting to the thought processes and even limitations of their partners.
But what I really took away was the variety of magical intimacies. Fitz and his dogs, certainly. But also Fitz and Prince Verity, whose sustained telepathic bond becomes almost subconscious, the presence of another person inside their minds as familiar as their own inner voice, but always other, comforting but stressful, intimate but exhausting. And the concept of a Skill-coterie, of groups weaving their magic together to strengthen it, to use it in unique ways; groups building intimacy only to physically separate themselves, a web of psychic links and loneliness; the combination of strong magics and intense interpersonal relationships erupting into violence and lifetimes of loss, seen in Kestrel.
I always wished we saw more of coteries in particular, because Fitz is intentionally denied one. He sees them from the outside, learns them in theory, sees every risk, destroys one; he also glimpses their intimacy, but his background makes them impossible. He and audience both are left longing.
Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic fulfills that longing. These books continue to be limited by intended age group, with which I can't quite argueI don't think kids require simplistic books, but these plots are meant to be logical rather than intuitive, so they are straightforward, which spills over to heavy-handed characterization (that last alleviated in the later books by Polyam and Crane). But I'm forever amazed by how rewarding they are. The core cast doesn't have outstanding characterization, but their dynamic is somehow flawless.
Outcasts, banding together to create an intimacy so profound that they don't know if they should call one another friends or siblings! Psychic conversations! Magic-sharing! Magic bleedover, as their bond threatens to overshadow even their individual abilities. Skill-sharing, teaching each other reading and lockpicking, making a quick psychic phonecall for advice. Bickering and being petty even while linked by a profound bond! Risking their lives for one another, precisely because they trust in one another to survive. Falling asleep together in the common room; a cup for each housemate; the absent life-energy sensed through the walls when one of them is away. It's an accidental coterie, and, while the found family aspects are comforting, while the stresses are intentionally external or personalthe group dynamic doesn't go untouched, but isn't itself a source of dangerI enjoy it even more when seen that way: to project onto the dynamic the conflicts of incipient adolescence and adulthood, to imagine how intimacy changes and deepens as the children grow more complex with age, to anticipate troubles within the intimacy itself. And, as result, appreciate the intimacy more.
(And Pierce puts women everywhere! The cast is even female-majority. This is the major downfall of the Farseer books, and can only do good things.)
Dreamwidth entry mirror. Comment count:
.