Assassin's Quest

I finally got down to finishing Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb after something like two and a half months of reading, and the fact that I took that long is a sign that I didn’t enjoy the book a whole lot.

Assassin’s Quest is the final book in the Farseer Trilogy (the first two books being Assassin’s Apprentice and Royal Assassin respectively) and it is a huge departure from the first two books. For one, Fitz (the assassin) is finally taken out of the castle where he grew up, and is out in the world, trying to exact vengeance on King Regal, who killed King Shrewd and took his place.

As much as I found the stories of him in the castle boring, his “newfound” freedom is equally boring as he’s alone and the supporting cast that were painstakingly built up in the first two books like Patience, Kettricken, Chade, Burrich, Verity and the Fool are now minor characters at best, replaced instead by Kettle (who harbours some secret with the Skill) and Starling, a minstrel who is convinced following Fitz around will allow her to witness a world-changing act that she can write a song about and propel her to fame. Along the way there are new characters who keep Fitz company for a couple of chapters, but that’s it.

In short, the story really meanders too much for most of the book and Fitz keeps getting captured and miraculously escapes too many times to be convincing. He’s trained as the royal assassin but yet is hopeless in dangerous situations. Yes I understand that Robin Hobb’s intention here is to let us know how deeply scarred and hurt he is by nearly dying (or actually dying) at Regal’s hands, but following a character wallowing in his own self-pity and incompetence for the better part of 600 pages hardly makes for an engaging read. Even introducing Burrich’s “origin” story is two books to late, and hardly even matters given that he barely appears in the book at all. The resolution of the Red Ship Raiders comes almost as an afterthought, which is particularly anti-climatic given how big a threat they were built up to be in the first two books of the series.

All in all, this book really is a disappointment given the strength of the two books that have come before. I can honestly say I would have been better off if I had treated the Farseer trilogy as a duology and stopped after the second book, and you probably should too.