Assassin's Apprentice (Spoiler Alert!)

---

SYNOPSIS:

In a faraway land where members of the royal family are named for the virtues they embody, one young boy will become a walking enigma.

Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard, cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals - the old art known as the Wit - gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if used too often, is a perilous magic, and one abhorred by the nobility.

So when Fitz is finally adopted into the royal household, he must give up his old ways and embrace a new life of weaponry, scribing, courtly manners; and how to kill a man secretly, as he trains to become a royal assassin.

---

REVIEW

(4 STARS)

Idea (17/20):

Even though it's one of those typical fantasy trilogies with medieval vibes and complex worlds, I found this book to be refreshing and quite new. First, because there's not a clear idea of what will be happening in this series - there's no main thread that you can see the author developing: even though we'll be following the characters we met in book one, this book's story was pretty much finished. There were no big loose ends or mysteries - Hobb tidied it all up, leaving a few hints as what will be developed in the next installment.

The idea of an assassin is not original, sure. Nor is the fact that he's an outcast, hated by almost everyone because he's a bastard - but to me, it felt exciting. Perhaps because I've never read a book following the perspective of an assassin, or maybe because Fitz is not a man-at-arms or a ninja, but masters the art of killing discretely, of poisons, of the Skill and the Wit. This was also something that, despite not being original, was really enjoyable.

Lastly, I just want to make something crystal clear - people compare this universe to "Game of Thrones", but Hobb published it a year before Martin. If someone was inspired by the other, was that way around - and let me just tell you that the parallelism of some elements creeped me out.

Plot (13/20):

Hobb really invests her time creating a solid background story for Fitz. If you're expecting things to run fast and smooth, they won't: we watch Fitz grow from 6 to 14, and there are not as many time jumps as one might think. I enjoyed this because it helped me understand Fitz's personality but at the same time, I must admit Hobb sometimes dragged on a bit. Some moments could've been cut from the book because nothing was happening, at all - it was like Fitz was a vlogger and all we did was tag along as he lived his daily life. It didn't bother me exactly, but sometimes I felt like Hobb was just trying to gain some time to think what to do next.

Despite these pointless moments, I loved the numerous challenges she created: it was not only Fitz's life, but the Kingdom problems and Verity's problems and Nosebleed's. Despite following only Fitz perspective (it's not like Game of Thrones, with different POVs, thank God), there was still a lot happening story-wise.

Characters (14/20):

An interesting thing I felt was how I didn't exactly love any character - there's not one that stands out to me and makes me fangirl. They are all likable, but they're also very human, flawed people with defects who make wrong decisions.

Fitz is a good kid, yet sometimes he's slow at connecting the dots and that annoyed me tremendously - Chade's secret was pretty obvious right from the beginning and he didn't have a clue until Chade told him explicitly.

Chade was probably my favorite character, but I can't fully trust him, I don't know why. He's too involved in the crown's games to be an innocent pawn.

Burich is a tough man with a butter heart, except when it comes to do the Wit - any sign of it and he completely loses his sh*t and I'm like: dude, you probably practiced it at some point in your life for sure (and I guess he kind of admits it at the end).

Verity was an underdeveloped character I hope to see more of on the next books because I started to like him at the end. I totally understand why Hobb didn't write about him more since he was busy with the kingdom problems and away from Fitz range. It's these little things that make her such a good writer.

Galen and Royal were just disgusting characters who clearly suffered in the past and aimed for greatness. Hobb did an amazing job depicting them as hateful beings who were like that because of their upbringing - she didn't simply create hate, she explained why they were the way they were and that was extremely important because every villain has a story. Free violence is not that common, there's always a reason behind a criminal act.

Shrewd is a mysterious character about whom I still don't have an opinion. This also happened with characters like Nosebleed, Cob, etc.

World (17/20):

Only when I closed the book did I realize the similarities between this and Game Of Thrones. I don't know if George R. R. Martin read this book as he was writing his or if it was just one of those "great minds think alike" moments, but world and plot-wise, there were a few things that stood out.

* The Red Ship Raiders forge people who lose all their sense of self and become soulless creatures who only care for food and plunder, with no concept of empathy, sympathy or human connection. In "Game Of Thrones", we have the white walkers, zombie-like creatures who have no remembrance of their past lives and who only care about "turning" everybody into their kind;

* The Wit is pretty much the same connection Jon has with Ghost, the only difference is that Fitz can make it with any animal, any number of times;

* Also, overstating, Fitz is basically Jon: a bastard who gets toyed around and finds himself in the middle of politics and schemes, who fights the forged just as Snow fights the White Walkers. I KNOW this is an exaggeration, but at the same time... it makes you wonder;

* The political concept of the Six Duchies and Westeros is pretty much the same: there's a family on the throne ruling it all, and then while on the first, the King must seek alliances to strengthen his power and fight the Red Ship Raiders, Westeros is on a "who deserves the throne better" war UNTIL they have to unite against the White Walkers.

I love both worlds. It's not a fight of who did it best or if one copied the other. The similarities just blew my mind and if I stood here thinking more thoroughly I bet I could find more.

Writing (17/20):

Personally, the most wonderful thing about this book was without a doubt Hobb's writing. She's clever and thinks about every detail carefully - like Verity's absence from Fitz's narrative -, becoming Fitz and leaving the narrator's part: she doesn't hint to have any inside knowledge as the writer, she only shows us what Fitz new, she only saw what Fitz saw and she only told what Fitz had lived.

Another thing that I found amazing and interesting was how she told Fitz's story. This book happens in two moments: the Now, when Fitz is older and is writing his memoir as well as a kind of History of the Six Duchies (I think); and the Then, that starts when Fitz is five and is taken from his mother.

From then on, we see him grow and accompany him in his daily life. However, we don't connect with him as a child, we connect with him as the grown men he is in Now since he's telling us about his past - the way he writes, the way he lays down his thoughts and describes the cities and places he visited, the way he sees relationships and connects with people... You see it all through the tainted experience of the adult who has lived those things and had time to think about them. You never remember things as they actually happened (except if you're Fitz and you've been trained to do so) and when telling past events, it's impossible to not defile them with your current beliefs, perspectives, feelings, and knowledge.

Writer Fitz has knowledge Past Fitz doesn't, as he often reminds the reader. So we don't connect with the 14-year-old Fitz - we often forget his age, actually -, we connect with the older one, because we're reading his adult work. We connect with the wise one, the one who has lived it all and knows how those adventures end.

This is why I loved Hobb's writing so much - she knows what she's doing. Despite her (sometimes) endless descriptions that made the pace of the book excruciatingly slow and the fact that (again, sometimes) it felt like we were reading Fitz's pointless routine (the two reasons why I didn't give this book 5 stars), her work is phenomenal.

TOTAL: 78 =⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️