Assassin's Apprentice

Assassin's Apprentice isn't doing anything incredibly new, but what it does do it does with such a high level of craft and emotional resonance that it feels new anyways. Be prepared for pain! Born out of wedlock and growing up without parents, Fitz knows from a young age that the odds are stacked against him. Most people see him as a tool at best and an obstacle at worst. He has to fight for every ounce of respect he gets; and no matter how hard he tries, he is always plagued by feelings of loneliness and powerlessness, finding himself unable to protect the people he loves or imagine a happy future for himself. He fails, and his failures have tragic consequences. There are points where it feels like Fitz is totally alone, like he has show more somehow lost everything that ever made his life good and faces a kind of hopelessness from which he will never escape.

However, perhaps the world is not ultimately a hopeless place. Maybe things can get better. Sickness can be healed; mistakes can be forgiven; relationships can be mended. Fitz's ability to turn away from desolation before it consumes him, to continue through hopelessness, keeps him and the reader afloat. There are moments of joy. Fitz does get stronger and smarter over time; and he does find people that he can see him, at least in part, for who he really is, and care about that version of him. It makes you think--maybe there is hope for the future.

Among all the darker aspects of childhood, one thing the novel does a particularly good job of depicting is the challenges children face in their relationships with authority figures. By virtue of his low status as court, Fitz has few friends his age. The most important relationships in his life are with mentors--adults like his father's groom Burrich, the assassin Chade, and cruel Skillmaster Galen who attempt to organize Fitz's life and cultivate him into the kind of man they want him to be, and use their age, rank, and expertise to justify doing so. Fitz is aware of all the ways that these mentors don't completely understand him as a person, but he can't help wanting to earn their love and affection. He can't stop wanting to become the person they tell him he should be, and trying to see the world in the way that they see it--for good or for ill. They don't just tell him what to do, they change who he is as a person. That's what childhood is to me--the unacknowledged gulf between a child and an adult with authority over them, and the pain of looking across it and seeing how far apart you are. That's what Fitz has to confront as he tries to develop a new understanding of himself, not long to be a child. show less

Background (No Spoilers)

This is a saga about a boy, Fitz, who spends his life always in reluctant service to others - in particular, the Farseer Rulers of the Six Duchies. Fitz wants so much just to follow his own dreams. Yet his royal blood means that self-determination can never really be his fate. Like the rulers of the Mountain Kingdoms acknowledge, those with royal blood must be a “sacrifice” to their people, and have no other choice: “the true ruler of a kingdom is the servant of all.”

Fitz was born out of wedlock to Chivalry Farseer, the King-in-Waiting of the Six Duchies. At age six, Fitz was taken away from his mother by his grandfather and handed over to Verity, Chivalry’s brother, at Buckkeep Fortress.

With Fitz's show more existence known, Chivalry was forced as a manner of honor to abdicate his right to the throne and to leave Buckkeep. Fitz’s care was given by Verity in part to Burrich, the Stablemaster of Buckkeep and Chivalry’s right-hand man. A third brother, Regal, was jealous of Chivalry and Verity, and when Fitz came, Regal began to hate Fitz the most of all of them. Regal resolved to get rid of all three of them so he could rule after the death of their father, King Shrewd.

The others ignored Regal, because the Six Duchies had bigger (or so they thought) problems. They were being besieged by pirates from the Outislands, who traveled in distinctive red ships, raiding the shores and stealing the wealth of the Six Duchies. Then the Outislanders began kidnapping villagers and by some unknown process returning them as zombie-like monsters. Because this practice began with the village of Forge, such people, no matter their origin, were ever after known as “Forged.”

People who were Forged could not even be detected by the Skill. This was a magic common to those in the Farseer line enabling a person to reach out to another’s mind, no matter how distant, and know that person’s thoughts. If the other person were Skilled also, the two could even communicate through mind-speak, and if one had evil intent, he or she could control or even kill the other person via the Skill.

The trilogy can almost be seen as a catalog of Fitz’s suffering. Yes, he is a hero, but not a shining, caped hero that escapes repeated trials to save the day. Rather, he is battered and bruised, both physically and psychologically, with few moments of happiness. Thus it is that the rare glimpses of sunlight in his life make you want to weep for him. It is not at all spoilery to tell you he survives however, because the trilogy begins as a recounting by a much older Fitz of his memories. But as for how intact he is when he writes down these memories, and what his current status is - for that you have to read the books.

In Book One, King Shrewd’s half-brother Chade trains Fitz to be The King’s Assassin. It is Fitz’s job to go where the King (through Chade) sends him and to quietly get rid of enemies, including the Forged whenever he finds them.

King Shrewd also insists that Fitz receive training in use of Skill, and so Fitz becomes part of a “coterie” of students taught by Galen, the twisted, masochistic half-brother to Regal. Galen is a cruel teacher and hates Fitz, so it is difficult training, in which Fitz does not excel. Galen brutally beats Fitz, trying, it seems to Fitz, to kill him. But in spite of (or because of) Galen's malicious treatment, Fitz feels like a failure, having internalized Galen’s relentless negative judgments of him. Galen also did something damaging to Fitz's Skill, but it is difficult for Fitz to figure out what it is or how to correct it.

As the book ends, Fitz is sent along with a group to the Mountain Kingdoms to retrieve Princess Kettricken to come back to Buckkeep and be wedded to Verity. Verity is busy using his Skill to try to attack the Red Ship Raiders, so Regal is to go in his place to seal the deal. Burrich goes along to tend to the horses, and Fitz goes with an assassin job to kill Ketricken’s brother Rurisk. Regal has convinced his father that Rurisk needs to be eliminated. Fitz is bound to carry out the King’s will, but he begins to suspect Regal has engineered this murder for nefarious reasons.

Soon Fitz discovers that it is not only Rurisk that Regal wants dead, and Fitz and Burrich must also fight for their lives. show less

Update: I read this for the third time (TBH it's probably my fourth time through) as I plan on finally reading my way through the entire series and series adjacent books. It was wonderful to start the journey again with a wonderful cast of characters, settings, and events. I marveled this time at how many were jam-packed into the first book. I'm reading a number of books right now, but this one pulled me away from the others to complete it in a few days.

Second time reading the Assassin's Apprentice and I'm taking my 4 star rating up to 5. Hobb is an imaginative world builder and as I was reading this book my mind kept taking me back to other books in the series and how this world continued to expand. A fantastic start to the adventures show more of the beloved FitzChivalry and the Fool. show less

Oh this was just delightful; it was definitely fantasy, but not So Fantasy that I felt alienated or struggled to get into it and understand the world. Honestly I just found this book very deeply charming; I found Fitz very easy to root for and be invested in, and the surrounding cast are each so intriguing and interesting in turn, while also definitely serving their role in Fitz's life. His trials and tribulations for the most part were pretty well-paced, though my biggest complaint about the book is that the final action seemed to happen a little too quickly.

Otherwise, I was just deeply into Fitz and his journey from pretty much minute one, and I really look forward to reading more about him and his friends (and enemies?) If you want show more fantasy but like low-key fantasy, I would say this book is definitely a good one! show less

Assassin’s Apprentice is an odd one, because it has the slow pace of a cozy fantasy, but with very little coziness to be found in the storyline. If you need your fantasy to be an action packed, briskly paced page-turner, you probably won’t like this book. But if you like to be fully immersed in a well thought out fantasy world, can tolerate slower paced plots, and are into the intricacies and political intrigue of fantasy worlds, then I think this book would be for you. Assassin’s Apprentice is written in 1st person from a singular perspective, which is great if you enjoy being inside a main character’s head. Robin Hobb makes a cool choice to combine the more modern feeling of a 1st person narrative with an old school fantasy show more writing style, so readers who are used to recently published fantasy books will probably still really like this one.

The first half is much slower, and towards the beginning I chipped away at a glacial pace, unsure whether or not it would be worth the read. The second half gets way more interesting, building upon itself. And then Robin Hobb executes some impressive, complicated twists close to the end that had my heart racing! She’s masterful at weaving all the parts of the story together in a way that creates great payoff for the reader. She also writes characters who have depth to them, including plenty of morally gray characters, making sure they develop gradually and realistically over the course of the book. For me, it ultimately ended up being a very solid 4 star read! Absolutely continuing on with the series. show less

As a home educator and one interested in discerning values worth passing on and developing good character, I really appreciated the life lessons embedded in this story. Fitz the bastard son of a prince, the heir to the throne, has so much against him. And we do, too, whether it's a background of deprivation of poverty and abuse like Fitz's or the story of those privileged and therefore weak of character if not mind and body (think of Eustace in The Dawn Treader and many of the children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). As elderly Fitz recalls the history of his people and the events of his life, he recounts the wise words from those around him, sometimes meant for his ears, other times not. But from the perspective of an old man he show more reveals to us through story the rough and sharp gems that can build our character if we recognize them and put them to use. Allow yourself to be taught, put into practice what you learn, and grow to be strong when pressure reveals who and what you are. And when you fail, begin again.

I was totally immersed in Robin Hobb's world. All my senses were full of the world she's created. I loved it. show less

One of the best fantasy novels I've read. Hobb's writing is both beautiful and thorough, and takes the classical Arthurian values and tropes into an entirely new direction that makes every act something to reflect on. Extra points for the creation of a fantasy world whose "darkness" and gritty qualities aren't reliant on sexual violence like so many other authors of the genre.