"A bastard is a unique thing." So is Assassin's Apprentice.
Written: Aug 03 '05 (Updated Sep 02 '08)
Product Rating:
Pros: Character development. Pacing. And almost everything else.
Cons: Very little.
The Bottom Line: Not especially strong, or fast, or bright. But it has stubbornness, enough to make me love it more than any other work of contemporary fantasy.
panguitch's Full Review: Robin Hobb - Assassin's Apprentice
"Useless bastards are a liability to royalty." – Rurisk
A bastard is a dangerous thing to leave lying around. King Shrewd, as his name would suggest, is well aware of this. When his illegitimate grandson comes to light, Shrewd asks "What will you make of him?"
The boy’s father, Prince Chivalry, makes of him a shame. Having belied his name, he abdicates and retires to the countryside, afraid to ever visit or look on his son, lest it be construed as giving the bastard a claim to the throne.
Prince Verity, now King-in-Waiting, is no less nonplussed. He recognizes they "can’t have royal bastards cluttering up the countryside," but he has a soldier’s mind, and the best solution he can think of is to have Chivalry’s gruff stable master, Burrich, care for the boy.
Burrich is left reeling by Chivalry’s fallibility. Nor is he equipped for raising a six-year-old boy. The bastard lives the life of a stable hand, under Burrich’s rigid supervision.
Regal, the youngest prince, is now second-in-line to the throne. But he has no thanks for the bastard, and makes of him a target for all his petty abuses.
Shrewd is as Shrewd does, and while it would be safest to kill the bastard, King Shrewd sees an opportunity to make him into a useful tool. So after a few years living and working in the stable, the bastard is given a room in the keep, new clothes, lessons in weapons, in writing, and in the Skill, a telepathic magic. And late one night, a hidden door opens in the bastard’s room and he meets one more instructor: Chade, who will make of him an assassin.
"Just know, from the beginning, that I’m going to be teaching you how to kill people." – Chade
From this premise one might expect a swashbuckling adventure, with the bastard, called simply Fitz, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. But Fitz is no action hero. He’s a child. An abandoned, abused, and afraid child. From Burrich he learns to work and to obey. From Chade he learns to spy and to kill. But neither mentor is really a father figure. Fitz lives a loveless life, and his story is not for the fainthearted. You need courage to read this book. Not the kind of courage that means merely bravery, but the kind of courage that endures lonely pain for the sake of loyalty.
Assassin’s Apprentice is the antithesis of all that’s wrong with contemporary fantasy. Good and evil are more than teams on a playing field, they battle inside every character’s heart. There’s more of realism than of magic. There’s more of dirt than of grandeur. There’s more of defeat than of victory. There’s more of sorrow than of gore. And there are only 356 pages.
This is a character-driven novel, and so there is no one we adore without hesitation. Fitz himself can become tiring as he suffers through both physical and emotional torture, alternating with stupid teen angst. Not only do the characters develop as time passes, but their relationships evolve. And throughout this web the strands of political intrigue grow ever stronger, ever tighter, and the neck they form a noose around is Fitz’s.
Our heart breaks for Fitz with each gauntlet he must run, and as he grows up so the things he suffers grow, until at the end our ‘hero’ is a casualty, a spent tool that too many hands tried to ply at the same time, at cross-purposes. And him but a child. Some bildungsroman.
Robin Hobb’s writing is not perfect. Her naming scheme can annoy, as can her predilection for words like "get" and "crabbing." But these are the smallest of motes, which hardly disturb the eye that takes in these characters and the gradual developments that culminate in a climax of unparalleled intensity and surprise.
Hobb assumes her readers are intelligent enough to follow along without spoon-feeding, and wise enough to prefer a story without gaudy trappings. Major themes like loyalty and minor themes like drug use are unfolded mimetically. Her prose is not flashy, and her story is noteworthy for little save its quality—a singular quality that is best represented by the novel being written in first person. It’s certainly not the only first person novel in science fiction and fantasy. And the approach lurches a bit at the introduction and epilogue. But it’s done better than most in the way that matters most: it draws you in to Fitz.
This is what I mean when I use the point of view to symbolize the novel’s quality. In this book the hero accomplishes very little. He’s more like flotsam buffeted by battling currents. There is a fantasy world here, complete with wars and intrigues and crises. But ultimately that setting and those events serve as backdrop to the protagonist’s personal problems. In fantasy and science fiction, it’s rare when setting and concept are subordinate to character. Rare is the perfect word for Robin Hobb and Assassin’s Apprentice.
Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father s gruff stableman. He is treated lik...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
General Fiction - Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father's gruff stableman....More at Barnes and Noble
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