Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb

Quest stories. Man oh man, quest stories in fantasy. They've been done, a lot. Sometimes well, sometimes poorly, often taking Tolkien and pasting other characters on top of it. I have to say, though, it wasn't until George R.R. Martin's fourth or fifth book that I started to get really, really freaking sick of quest stories. Because by then, I had started to notice that if we spend any time with the character who is travelling from one place to another in search of something, they were never ever just going to freaking get there. Something would happen - and that's okay if it happens once or twice, but when I start needing to find something beyond fingers and toes to count on for how many times it happens, and how rarely anyone JUST FUCKING GETS WHERE THEY'RE GOING and how that delays the story and doesn't add a ton? I was frustrated. I continue to be frustrated, as you can see.

I can, however, tolerate quest stories when that's not really the story, when there's a good cast of characters and it's about how they relate to each other, not whether or not they'll get to the end of the road they're travelling on. (But I do get impatient when roadblock after roadblock is thrown at characters, because it feels like the story is being delayed. Travelling itself is not a plot. Dream bigger. Figure out what happens when they arrive.)

Which is all to say, I didn't so much enjoy the first third or so of Assassin's Quest, when the main character, was travelling on his own personal quest of revenge, by himself, and meeting setback after setback. I started to get bored, just waiting for the next thing that would make this long book longer. It's not that it was poorly written, it's just a fantasy trope that I am very, very exhausted by. After, though, Fitz met up with others and continued his voyage, and suddenly I found it much more interesting! Because from that point, although it was still voyage-setback-voyage-setback, much more of the story became about the interconnections of these people and how they related, and I was back on board.

But other than the ranting about the trip, I suppose I haven't told you much about this book. It's the third in a trilogy, in a larger fictional universe. Fitz is the bastard son of a prince, brought up in the castle as an assassin's apprentice, as well as a wizard's apprentice - Fitz has a little of the "good at everything" syndrome going on, but he's not great at being a wizard, and we partly find out why in this book. He's much better at a different kind of magic, connecting with animals, one wolf in particular. This is a talent that is much feared and scorned.

Fitz is also supposed to be dead, did in fact die, we find out, and it was only through a combination of Talent and Wit that his friends were able to bring him back to life after he'd been tortured to death by his uncle, the new and usurping King Regal. Fitz, after he comes back to himself, decides he needs to kill Regal, and then have his life to himself, finally, for the first time.

I'm not unsympathetic to this character motivation, but the form it took did fall into that pattern of "Fitz travels to do something, things prevent him" for a little too long for me. It was less about his discovery, more about the journey. However, that said, once he decides to go north to find Kettricken, his deposed uncle's wife, and travels there with an overanxious bard and a mysterious old woman, and then runs into the Fool and then everyone bands together to go find Verity and it becomes more about interactions between these people as they travel and run into difficulties in getting where they're going, suddenly the reading was so much more compelling.

As was what happened when they finally, finally got there. This rounds off this trilogy in this world, although there are other related books that I have not read, but we get Fitz to a place, not of happiness, but at least of pause, after having been through quite a lot. In the end, I'd be willing to read more of Hobb's books in this world, but I keep my fingers crossed the plots are less travelogues-with-delays.