A review by mzgreads
Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb

1.0

woof this was tough to get through. we did not need a cameo from so many of the liveship traders characters (ronica? seriously?), which served absolutely no purpose to the main plot and (in my opinion) having the liveships transform into dragons undid the complexity of the ending of that trilogy. i also really did not like the way fitz perceived amber as a person entirely separate from the fool and as someone he didn’t like or trust. in general this book was incredibly badly paced and plotted. i lost count of the times the exact same thing happened: bee’s escaped—oh no bee’s captured again—repeat. fitz is definitely dead and this is the final goodbye—oh wait no he’s alive again—repeat. lots of torture scenes described in agonising detail for no real reason at all. fitz and the fool dying together was an inevitability that i foresaw from book 1 and by the time it happened i was quite frankly relieved. their relationship didn’t progress or develop in any meaningful way throughout the trilogy, probably because robin hobb was unable to actually commit to making their relationship a romantic and sexual one. so when you read exchanges like “what are we? / “friends” and then they’re followed by “you were the one [fitz] loved most of all”, it just don’t really hit i’m afraid. the 1 star is for thick teaching bee how to make music and that alone