Assassin's Apprentice - Robin Hobb

Published by Voyager/HarperCollinsPublishers: Hammersmith, London, 1996 (1995).
Book 1 of 'The Farseer Trilogy.' Followed by 'Royal Assassin.'

Hey writers. Have you ever had trouble coming up with a name for your protagonist? It is possible that Robin Hobb did, as the main character in Assassin's Apprentice is a nameless boy, whose father happened to be the heir-in-waiting to the Seven Duchies. As a bastard (a term that gets flung his way often throughout the book) the boy is mistreated by many of the people in his life, with the main result being that it takes a long time for anyone to get around to giving him an actual name, and even longer for him to be given a name that everyone accepts as his name.

It's quite an interesting element in a fairly interesting story, one that I got through a lot quicker than the much shorter Jungle Books. 

Our protagonist - generally called 'Fitz' (which, if you know your etymology, means bastard) - is adopted into the royal household, but never meets his father, who abdicates his title and leaves court due to the scandal of Fitz's birth. Instead, he is raised by Burrich, the stablemaster who was previously the right-hand-man of Fitz's father. Later on he is also trained as (surprise) an assassin by the mysterious Chade, and eventually in the magical art of the Skill by the devious Galen. The Skill is a form of telepathy with a few other features, and is similar to another magic that Fitz possesses: Wit. Wit enables Fitz to communicate with animals, but whereas Skill is a 'royal art' and is highly prized, Wit is considered dangerous and disturbing. Fitz, who is a natural at Wit, must keep one of his talents to himself while struggling to learn the other, which is not easy considering Galen's antagonism towards him.

Meanwhile, there are various big-picture things happening in the kingdom: raiders are striking the coast and turning their captives into emotionless beasts, a political alliance is being sought with the neighbouring Mountain Kingdom that may involve a royal marriage, and Fitz is falling for a local chandler's daughter, Molly.

There is a lot going on in this book, and despite it being marketed as the "first" novel by author Robin Hobb, it is actually the first novel by this pseudonym of another author who had previously produced a number of books. The detailed plotting and the clever twisting of motivation and expectation show the practiced hand of Hobb's other name (not that I've read any of the books by this author before), and keep Assassin's Apprentice as a page-turner the whole way through.

I'm looking forward to hunting out book 2 in the series at some point.

Completed 8 March 2025.



(The Farseer Trilogy)

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