The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince by Robin Hobb

The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince is a novella with some backstory into Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings (ROTE) worldbuilding. If you haven't read ROTE, I'm sure this book would be absolutely fine to read, but if you have read ROTE, it's full of just wonderful callbacks and foreshadowing and I was absolutely delighted to spend a couple of hours dropped back into Buckkeep Castle. The book itself was briefly mentioned in Royal Assassin and it's awesome that Hobb actually wrote it out for us. 

In Fitz's world in ROTE, the Witted, people who build a strong bond with an animal and can communicate with their bond partner, are treated with disrespect and animosity. Many Witted folk try to hide their abilities and others have banded together in smaller communities that rarely interact with non-Witted.

This novella, set generations before the events of ROTE, tells the tale of how the Witted went from being just another type of magic that occurred, albeit rarely, to something that was feared and loathed. It was just as riveting and compelling as anything else in the ROTE world and the last two paragraphs came as a complete surprise to me and yet tied everything together in such a wonderful way.  

If you haven't read ROTE yet, what are you waiting for?  

4.5/5 stars