Here’s the blurb;
The final book in the Fitz and the Fool trilogy.
Prince FitzChivalry Farseer’s daughter Bee was violently abducted from Withywoods by Servants of the Four in their search for the Unexpected Son, foretold to wield great power. With Fitz in pursuit, the Servants fled through a Skill-pillar, leaving no trace. It seems certain that they and their young hostage have perished in the Skill-river.
Clerres, where White Prophets were trained by the Servants to set the world on a better path, has been corrupted by greed. Fitz is determined to reach the city and take vengeance on the Four, not only for the loss of Bee but also for their torture of the Fool. Accompanied by FitzVigilant, son of the assassin Chade, Chade’s protégé Spark and the stableboy Perseverance, Bee’s only friend, their journey will take them from the Elderling city of Kelsingra, down the perilous Rain Wild River, and on to the Pirate Isles.
Their mission for revenge will become a voyage of discovery, as well as of reunions, transformations and heartrending shocks. Startling answers to old mysteries are revealed. What became of the liveships Paragon and Vivacia and their crews? What is the origin of the Others and their eerie beach? How are liveships and dragons connected?
But Fitz and his followers are not the only ones with a deadly grudge against the Four. An ancient wrong will bring them unlikely and dangerous allies in their quest. And if the corrupt society of Clerres is to be brought down, Fitz and the Fool will have to make a series of profound and fateful sacrifices.
ASSASSIN’S FATE is a magnificent tour de force and with it Robin Hobb demonstrates yet again that she is the reigning queen of epic fantasy.”
First things first, I love the Robin Hobb’s Fitz books. I’ve tried to read other books of her’s set in the same ‘universe’ and struggled to varying degrees – I did best with her Dragon books and failed magnificently with The Liveship Traders, but this is not because the books are bad, not at all, it’s because Fitz and his Fool and the Wolf are absent from the books and it’s those characters, as well as the many others that populate her three Fitz trilogies, that draw me into her richly imagined word.
This, is the final book in the third trilogy, and it is an absolute monster, coming in it at over 900 pages, but oh, how I warred with myself. I didn’t want it to end, and I was equally desperate to get to the end; to know what finally happened to Fitz. I tried to stop myself at 45% of the way through but found I was unable to, oh, and you’re kept guessing until the very, very end – so don’t be thinking that anything is going to be resolved any sooner than that.
These stories can be laboriously slow – taken up with one of the things I most hate about epic fantasy – the constant travelling and journeying to new countries – but somehow Robin Hobb gets away with it in ways I will not allow another author to do. Each detail is beautifully drawn out, and you’re left wondering how she has the patience to craft her stories so precisely and so well. There is no hint of a headlong rush to the end, and none of the characters are skimmed over – each is allowed to fully evolve and have their due time on the page and in the reader’s mind before the inevitable conclusion.
I can’t gush enough about how wonderful this final book was – it didn’t feel final for the vast majority of it – it’s not the work of an author giving a few more pages for a host of adoring fans – but rather a fully rounded and complex story. This third book still has much to offer readers, and I’m left wondering where Robin Hobb will venture next – will the story of the Farseers continue? (as really it must) or is this a fond farewell to the whole world of dragons and Skill users she’s evolved over the differing trilogies?
What I know is that I cried when I should have done, and left the trilogy feeling as though a job had been exceptionally well done and my own half-formed hopes and dreams for the characters had been both wholly-wrong and yet also rightly achieved.
I can’t recommend this book enough and for all those who’ve not yet read any of the three trilogies, I can feel only envy that you still have it all to come.
For my earlier reviews of the previous 2 books check here;
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1110324862
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1719671174
And you can buy the book here when it’s released on 4th May 2017.
MJ Porter 