If you're keeping count, that means I'm working my way through this extended world, Laura Lippman's Tess Monagan series, and Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q series. I'm a sucker for comforting characters who never let me down. I'm half tempted to start rereading Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone mysteries, but I'll resist until I'm at least done with one of my other serialized worlds.
In Assassin's Apprentice, our boy Fitz is the illegitimate son of the prince. He's abandoned by his mother at a royal home and Fitz embarks on a life in which he is trained to be an apprentice while palace intrigue unfolds all around him. The book dives into a rich description of the life of a royal-adjacent, the scope of the kingdom, and the slight magical elements that make this world run. And it does it all through the eyes of Fitz as he grows up. When he's a child, he notices the things that a child would notice. When he's a young man, he noticed the things a young man would notice. It's absolutely wonderful to watch him grow up.
It's also a book with one gut punch after another. Poor Fitz is despised from the moment he appears at Buckkeep's door. He finds one comfort that is almost immediately taken away from him. His most consistent mentor in life, a stablemaster, is as inconstant in his affections as a feral cat. Every time you think things are going to turn around for poor old Fitz, things do not.
The thing I like about Hobb's writing is that she weaves in details of the world seamlessly. We know from just a few pages in that Fitz can somehow feel what animals around him are feeling. Because everything is told from Fitz's perspective, this magic is just normal to us. So when someone points out that this ability, known as Wit, is unnatural, you're just as surprised as Fitz is. I love how Hobb seamlessly incorporates world-building this way.
This book just resonated with me, at this time of safer at home and a global pandemic. Consider the following two passages.
I. All events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence by the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day living. Men walking a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight. I have seen farmers continue their plowing and planting, heedless of armies clashing but a few miles away. (Chapter 3)
I just think about how I still get up in the morning, walk the dog, eat breakfast, and things are still sort of normal, but the world is falling apart us. I read this passage and it just really struck a chord with me at this moment in history.
II. And the kingdom fails, for as each town must decide alone, so it is separated from the whole. We will shatter into a thousand little townships, each worrying only about what it will do for itself if it is raided. (Chapter 11)
A couple of weeks ago there was a meme going around the internet with the text "having some states lock down and some states not lock down is like having a peeing section in a pool" imposed over a photo of swimming pool. That's what I kept thinking about. Defense of the whole only works if everyone does their bit to work together. You can't become isolated in your thinking because that instinct towards self-preservation harms the total.
To wrap it all up, I'm super excited to read the rest of these books in the order in which they were intended to be read. Yay for Robin Hobb!
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