Reviews - Fool's Fate | The StoryGraph

1.99k reviews for:

Fool's Fate

Robin Hobb

4.56 AVERAGE

mercymourn's review against another edition

5.0

Absolutely devastating, especially in moments when fitz learns to accept love and comfort. Many other things, too.

velocitygirl14's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

zenalth's review against another edition

4.0

Hobb's books have always been about the characters.

The ending felt a little rushed and the climax of Icefyre's plot felt left me wanting, but those flaws hardly seem to matter. They are lost in the joys of following Fitz and the Fool. Despite the fantastical world filled with haughty dragons, teleportation stones and sentient ships, the cast is always grounded in reality and their internal struggles so painfully real.

The relationship between Fitz and the Fool really takes the stage in this book. I don't particularly ship them together, but the depths of their love for one another touched a tender place deep within me.

Spoiler

Fitz's trudge through the ice palace to find Beloved's body and his narration of the torture he'd endured horrified me. I'm not a very emotional reader, but those 50 pages fucked me up.

Although I don't love the ending (too soon, too soon), I firmly believe that Fitz deserves some modicum of light and happiness in his life after all he's endured. So I end as our protagonist did: content.

probablyoverthinking's review against another edition

3.0

There was a lot I really loved about this book. It was a good conclusion to the series. I didn't mind it being super drawn out with the audiobook, I may have lost focus if I had been reading it. I love the character development, I love the relationship between Fitz and The Fool. The worldbuilding is great and the "science" of the magic is sound. The end was gratifying. The thing that bothered me to no end is the way Thick is described and treated. I know, I know, it's a medieval inspired world and you can only expect so much humanity to be assigned to the disabled. Still, as Fitz got to know him, and even said Thick (that name, please) is not less, but just different, the infantilizing and pathologizing was in full force. It was just not respectful, even when it was loving. Without this, it's a five star read, but even acknowledging the positive messages about disability, this is hard for a disabled person to read. Authors, if you are writing about disability, please make sure you have disabled beta readers or consultants.

lunamond's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Robin hobb ripped my heart and stomped on it. Last time I cried that much over a book was Assassin's Quest.

rainbow_kitten_five's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

impreader's review against another edition

5.0

I know it's an inexcusably brief review, but this trilogy is the first set of books I've fallen into for, oy, some years. No greater compliment to a story than that it made one cry with the characters, laugh at and with them, and not feel manipulated or used by the author. It was a story for story's sake.