Reviews

Fool's Fate by Robin Hobb

sam4444's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

shandyt's review against another edition

5.0

4.75 stars.

I've always said I love a book with a good denouement, and boy, does this deliver.

The first third of the book is the weakest—think of it as "getting to the place." There is a long stretch of the book devoted to travel that felt interminable, with the only bright spots the

Spoiler

dream contact that Fitz had with Nettle, and Nettle helping Thick deal with his fear and sickness

. The middle third of the book, wherein they "do the thing," gets much more interesting. The pace is still slow at first, but then events pick up speed and coalesce into something almost like a miniature version of a Sanderson-style avalanche. Robin Hobb doesn't seem much of an action writer, but the action scenes were pace-y and had me on the edge of my seat. This section also featured the second passage to bring me to tears,

Spoiler

when Burrich, tenderly caring for Fitz, remarked that seeing Fitz injured turned him from a grown man back into the little boy that Burrich had raised on Chivalry's behalf.

Then the final third of the book is devoted to the best, most satisfying denouement of any fantasy series that I can think of. We are reintroduced to dear, beloved old friends, and are treated to what feels like the culmination of everything that came before. I only have two minor quibbles: that, after the moderate pace of the denouement up to that point,

Spoiler

Fitz's re-seduction of Molly

felt rushed, and that, after already having been faked out once,

Spoiler

Fitz was not the one to tell Nettle he was her father. He deserved that moment with her, loath as he seemed to actually speak the words

.

It's almost hard to imagine that there's a whole trilogy left to go. Then again, I thought the same thing after completing the original trilogy, wondering where the story would lead. The only way to know is to read on... so on I go!

mishon's review against another edition

adventurous emotional 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? Yes

4.0

fruitcd's review against another edition

I laughed, I cried, I gasped, I admired Hobb's straightforward yet beautiful prose, I fell in love with Fitz and the Fool and Dutiful and Elliana and Nettle and even fuck ass CHADE. Hobb's pacing is GLACIAL, but not a page is wasted. This trilogy slowly builds on top of itself until it is sprawling and epic, yet always stays deeply personal to Fitz.

And yet.

I have to talk about the ending. I knew a little bit about the ending going into the book and I was expecting to HATE it, but I was more lukewarm on it than I thought I'd be. That being said... I still don't think it's a very good or even thematically resonant ending. Molly and Fitz should not have

ended up married

. I am not even wearing my yaoi googles here, it's just baffling that throughout the series the audience has been told over and over again that Fitz doesn't really love Molly, he idolizes her and looks back on their romance with nostalgia because he misses that first spring love and those simple, uncomplicated times they had. Even if she hadn't married Burrich and had seven children with him, it has been fifteen years since she and Fitz last spoke. They're both wildly different people now! There is lip service paid to the time passed, with Fitz having to slowly earn his way back into her good graces, but it's just too little too late. It's also really hard to root for this relationship because of the extremely misogynist way Fitz views Molly, constantly treating her like she's an object that Burrich "took" from him that he is now "taking" back. And yes, Molly refutes that mindset by saying that nobody took her and marrying Burrich was her choice. But it just feels like more lip service, since even after she tells him that, Fitz continues to think of courting and eventually

having sex with

Molly as "claiming" her and possessing her!

And did I buy, on a narrative level, that

Fitz and the Fool would separate forever

? No, but after hearing the Fool list out his reasons, I at least believed that THEY believed that this was something they had to do. But it was also wildly obvious that on a meta level, Robin Hobb could not imagine a future for Fitz in which Molly was more important to him than the Fool. She just couldn't. But she wanted Molly and Fitz to

get married

, so she had to get rid of the Fool somehow. So the Fool falls into the trope of the self sacrificing gay man who nobly gives up on his own wants and desires so that heterosexual love can continue unimpeded.

I could actually get down with all this if it felt like it was SUPPOSED to be a bittersweet, slightly tragic ending. The Fool says it himself; when he saw Fitz without him in the future, Fitz was "happy enough." Not happy. Happy enough. Fitz and the Fool break the cycle, but not enough. They "break free" from their cycles of abuse, but just shift sideways into different cycles. Fitz becomes Burrich, taking on another man's wife and children out of his sense of duty and guilt and eventually finding genuine love with her. The Fool becomes Fitz, running away from the person he loves most after a traumatic incident strips him of his sense of self worth. 

But Starling's ending, to me, colors how I view Hobb's intentions. I literally can find no charitable interpretation of Starling's arc. It feels wildly insensitive to have a character struggling with infertility, worried that her husband is cheating on her and doesn't love her anymore because her only worth as a woman is her womb, and to have the ending to that arc not be that she discovers her husband loves her no matter what, or even that she leaves him and lives a fulfilling live without a man, but rather that

she miraculously becomes pregnant and decides to GIVE UP HER CAREER AND ALL HER FRIENDS in order to be the "perfect" wife so that "no shame" will touch her baby and her husband.

That is actually horrific to me, sorry! And to me at least, it suggests that Hobb DOES believe that unsatisfying het marriage and kids IS ultimately the "perfect" ending and the most satisfying thing that can happen to a character.

The epilogue feels like an unintended horror story. It's a shame, because I really, genuinely love this book and this trilogy overall. One of my new faves, for sure. But man, what a fumbled ending. 

dkadastra's review against another edition

4.0

Pretty good ending to the series.

raiju01's review against another edition

5.0

Fitz and the Fool, Fitz and Nighteyes...

I never felt such intimacy while reading as I have this book, seen characters so vunlerable, cried and celebrated so intensely. Not to discredit the other characters, most of them amazing in their own right.

This is a special trilogy to me now. I believe I'll remember it fondly for many years.

earth_person's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

camdev4's review against another edition

adventurous emotional inspiring tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

collinmcclutchy's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I cried at least three times. 

hannahw626's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A wonderful close to the trilogy. A very emotional read, featuring many characters you wished to see again. A very character driven book. Hobb wonderfully ties up many threads and gives you a satisfying ending.