Kitty G Books's Reviews > Assassin's Fate

Okay...I finished it... I REALLY didn't want to finish it, because I just *hope* it's not the end of everything in the Realm of the Elderlings. This has easily surpassed all the other fantasy series I have ever read for my favourite of all time (I'm including all the Realm of the Elderlings books in that) and as such it's so deeply part of my reading that I don't know if I could objectively review just this book. Hobb's world by this point is completely real to me, and every character feels genuinely like a friend, foe or something in-between...they are REAL to me, and that makes it hard to know what to say about this...possibly the last of the books.

Was this book everything I hoped? Yes and No. There's so many things and threads that do come together in this book and a lot of our immediate questions are resolved. However, so many things are once more opened up in this book that I fully believe this world is not over yet and whether Hobb writes more or not, this world lives on past the ending of this book.

Fitz. Fitz's story has been a story that got to me in a way no other character's story yet has. I think it's partly due to just how RAW Hobb is on the page. She really gives these character to us, the reader, shows us their hearts, loves, passions and fears. We fall for them time and time again, and then she'll do something horrible to them and we are right there suffering with them.
I've never encountered an author who can make me cry in almost every book multiple times, but Hobb can, and does. CONSTANTLY. Even when I felt like I was doing ok and processing things that the characters were going through I would get to the next line and something about the words she had written would just draw out tears and make me pause.

This book took me 10 days to read. It's 860ish pages long, and it's the last one (for now). I didn't want it to end, and so I took this slow. Whilst reading this book I went through all sorts of emotions, happy at the love I finally saw for some of the characters, sad at the danger I knew they headed towards...
Whilst I was reading this book I dreamed of soaring with Dragons and conversing with Bees and Wolves. I became immersed entirely in Fitz, Bee and the Fool, but also the others who surrounded them.
We saw some old favourites return in this book, and so many of the plots we've seen before were rounded off and continued and pushed further than I ever anticipated. SO MANY THINGS HAPPENED.

I always tend to read these books with a few friends of mine at the same time and leave messages for them with my thoughts. This time, I couldn't. This one felt too raw. Too personal. Too much.
I left a message that was me talking for half an hour once I finished this book. That was all I could do becuase I just didn't want to voice that things were coming to their close whilst I was still reading...

The world we saw in book #1 of the Farseer trilogy is SO far from the world we see in book #3 of Fitz and the Fool. We have been through so many wonders and horrors with these characters that they feel like part of our soul by this point of the book, and everything that happens to them we take inside ourselves like the memories of Liveships. This was a journey...

Without spoiling things, I loved and hated this all at once. Again I feel conflicted becuase it felt final, and yet there's so much left that we could go to explore. This world is ALIVE for me and just becuase I can't hop on a boat/plane and visit, doesn't mean it's not out there somewhere. I believe Robin Hobb knows it intimately, and we, the reader, are just scratching the surface...but what a story we've already uncovered...

If you've never read a Hobb book, I'd start at the start. There's a lot of pages ahead, but every one tells you something raw, and by the end it's beyond beautiful. 5*s of course, and I will forever have a special place in my heart for all these books and for Hobb in general. Excellent beyond excellent.