Scan barcode
A review by lilcurious
Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb
2.5
Well, that was a disappointment. I absolutely love Royal Assassin, it became one of my favorite books of all time, but this one just didn't do it. A lot of things felt wrong, to the point it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Robin Hobb was rushed by the publisher to finish this one soon. I think this review is gonna be a long one, sorry in advance.
First of all, I loved the beginning. Seeing the consequences of the last book's ending broke my heart in the best way possible. Fitz and Nighteyes bonding was such a delight too! I'm glad we could follow them for such a long part of the book.
Unfortunately, Nighteyes was probably the only character I could get totally behind in this book. Everyone just felt a little bit weird. And I understand the last book was pretty traumatic to everyone, but they felt like truly different people. The Fool was suddenly not mysterious at all, Verity has always been really communicative and was suddenly ignoring Fitz and being vague all the time, Regal had an a.w.f.u.l. character arc and even Fitz felt different to me, although I can't really pinpoint why. And why the fuck every woman who meets Fitz wants to fuck him? I know he is supposed to be handsome, but that was a bit much.
The pacing was all over the place too, important information kept being given at random-ass times. The aforementioned Regal character arc happened very suddenly and basically in one scene (Fitz taking so long to realize Regal was speaking through the Fool was so silly too ). A character I won't name because of spoilers (Kettle ) existed basically only to withhold important information for no discernible reason. Even though I knew of a certain relationship that happens in this book, it still caught me off guard because of the lack of build-up. And, of course, the ending happened at lightning speed, we had a whole trilogy worthy of build-up for only 5 pages of a battle Fitz wasn't even present for.
Also, the whole framing device of Fitz telling the story from the future felt super underutilized, only coming up in the ending so he could tell us what happened after the battle. Even the world-building excerpts at the beginning of each chapter were awkward, some of them were a bit repetitive for some reason, andone of them even referred to Chade in the past! Which gave me such a scare, but then by the end of the book (when Fitz is supposed to be writing what we are reading), there's no mention of Chade dying, so it was just a slip. I know it's small, but a slip that makes a loved character seem dead is somewhat serious, you know .
But the thing that really brought this book down for me is all spoilery.Verity dying so he could make an Elderling to help the Six Duchies and Fitz figuring out very soon after how to wake them up was. so. unsatisfying. Killing off Verity for no reason is certainly bad enough, but then Fitz doesn't even mention it, he never acknowledges that maybe they could win the war without Verity's sacrifice or some other vague thing like that. Also, when the guy died on top of the Elderling and kind of stirred him, I literally thought of someone just bleeding on them to see what would happen. Of course that is only half the solution, but if Fitz had tried something like that he would certainly use the Wit too and find out eventually. What I mean is that the solution wasn't that hard to think of, but we still had to let Verity die before figuring it out and not even mention that this whole ordeal could've been avoided. That's just so frustrating.
Overall, even though Robin Hobb's prose is still very nice to read and the beginning of the book is really good, the lack of attention to detail affected my experience too much. I will keep reading in the Realm of the Elderlings, but I really hope I'm not disappointed by the end of a trilogy like this again! I can take a middle book slump, but finishing it off on such a bitter note feels so bad.
First of all, I loved the beginning. Seeing the consequences of the last book's ending broke my heart in the best way possible. Fitz and Nighteyes bonding was such a delight too! I'm glad we could follow them for such a long part of the book.
Unfortunately, Nighteyes was probably the only character I could get totally behind in this book. Everyone just felt a little bit weird. And I understand the last book was pretty traumatic to everyone, but they felt like truly different people. The Fool was suddenly not mysterious at all, Verity has always been really communicative and was suddenly ignoring Fitz and being vague all the time, Regal had an a.w.f.u.l. character arc and even Fitz felt different to me, although I can't really pinpoint why. And why the fuck every woman who meets Fitz wants to fuck him? I know he is supposed to be handsome, but that was a bit much.
The pacing was all over the place too, important information kept being given at random-ass times. The aforementioned Regal character arc happened very suddenly and basically in one scene (
Also, the whole framing device of Fitz telling the story from the future felt super underutilized, only coming up in the ending so he could tell us what happened after the battle. Even the world-building excerpts at the beginning of each chapter were awkward, some of them were a bit repetitive for some reason, and
But the thing that really brought this book down for me is all spoilery.
Overall, even though Robin Hobb's prose is still very nice to read and the beginning of the book is really good, the lack of attention to detail affected my experience too much. I will keep reading in the Realm of the Elderlings, but I really hope I'm not disappointed by the end of a trilogy like this again! I can take a middle book slump, but finishing it off on such a bitter note feels so bad.