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A review by mattdavenport
Fool's Assassin by Robin Hobb
5.0
9.0 / 10 - Exceptional
Describing these books remains such a puzzling challenge for me. On one hand, I loved every second of reading Fool's Assassin, with plenty of heartstring moments of both joy and sadness. I lost sleep and operated tired because I simply couldn't put the book down and go to sleep. At the same time, in hindsight, not to much actually happened in the overall plot, at least for 240k words worth of story. That's a common comment I've had on especially the trilogy-opening books in Hobb's works, and that trend continued here. Nevertheless, by the end of the story a good bit has actually happened, and the set up for the last two books is absolutely insane.
We also have a new primary POV character to match with Fitz, and that character was done, once more, EXTREMELY well. The two of them constantly made me smile in joy or frown in consternation, and a lot of the imagery and dialogue on the nature of love and relationships really struck a chord with me.
In all, the book was mostly pretty slow, and it doesn't have quite enough excitement or epic-ness to get above some books that I've enjoyed on a similar level, but I do ultimately think the quality of the book and the veraciousness and joy with which I tore through it makes it deserve 5 stars.
Describing these books remains such a puzzling challenge for me. On one hand, I loved every second of reading Fool's Assassin, with plenty of heartstring moments of both joy and sadness. I lost sleep and operated tired because I simply couldn't put the book down and go to sleep. At the same time, in hindsight, not to much actually happened in the overall plot, at least for 240k words worth of story. That's a common comment I've had on especially the trilogy-opening books in Hobb's works, and that trend continued here. Nevertheless, by the end of the story a good bit has actually happened, and the set up for the last two books is absolutely insane.
We also have a new primary POV character to match with Fitz, and that character was done, once more, EXTREMELY well. The two of them constantly made me smile in joy or frown in consternation, and a lot of the imagery and dialogue on the nature of love and relationships really struck a chord with me.
In all, the book was mostly pretty slow, and it doesn't have quite enough excitement or epic-ness to get above some books that I've enjoyed on a similar level, but I do ultimately think the quality of the book and the veraciousness and joy with which I tore through it makes it deserve 5 stars.