Bookish Thoughts

The final book in Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy was probably about 100 pages longer than it needed to be. I enjoyed these books, largely due to the incredible world-building and wonderful cast of characters. But man did this book drag on, especially towards the end. The cover promises dragons. The plot talks about dragons. There are definitely going to be dragons in this book. But not until the last 20 pages or so, when Hobb has done everything she can to make you think that maybe there won't be dragons after all. (There are dragons.) Ultimately I didn't like this book as much as the first two. It starts off better. But most of the political intrigue is traded in for a long and seemingly fruitless trek through the mountains in the winter. The ending is ultimately satisfying, but it takes so damn long to get there. I came close to giving up or just skipping ahead to the last few chapters. Which is a hefty complaint, but there was still a lot to like about this book. Ther...

The second book in the Farseer trilogyis a lot like the first one: meandering and tragic. Fitz is a bit older. He's been through some tragedy, and he's anxious to carve out some sort of life for himself. Meanwhile his loyalties are shifting ever so slight, from the King to his eldest living son. The book starts off with a bit of a jolt. It backs up to just before the epilogue of the previous book. For the first few chapters it seems like it's going to go in a different direction altogether. But it's just an internal crisis that Fitz has to work through before reaffirming his loyalties and returning to court. After that it get right back into the thick of war and court politics. There's a fun, shadowy treason plot that threatens to tear the kingdom apart from the inside while raiders continue to attack from without. Fitz is doing his best to thwart both plots without betraying his loyalties and getting himself killed and while attempting to carve out some sort of...

The first thing that you need to know about this book is that the dog dies. And not just one dog either. Dogs keeps showing up and dogs keep dying. Okay, so I think there were only two dog deaths, but it feels like more. Especially because this book toys with your emotions like Jurassic Bark, leaving you but a shell of a person crying for a dog that isn't even real. My dog had better live forever. With that out of the way, I will say that I really enjoyed this book, though it may not be for everyone. It follows young Fitz, bastard of a prince, as he is introduced to court life and trained as an assassin for use by the king. The story takes a while to get started. It's slow and it jumps around a lot. It's almost episodic rather than a single story, as Fitz proceeds through different phases of training in sequence. And the ending is thrilling, though also a bit of a letdown. I suppose if all the plot threads had been tied off, there'd be no need for a trilogy. But thi...