Assassin's Apprentice by: Robin Hobb

 

Sometimes what you need to be reading is something that despite not having much of a plot, still deserves a long page count.  This is what happened with reading Assassin’s Apprentice, the first book published by Robin Hobb in The Realm of the Elderlings and had the book taken any faster of a pace, much of the charm would be lost.  The novel is essentially a coming of age story where the title is both incredibly fitting yet somewhat misleading, assassination, while playing a role in the story and the climax, takes a backseat to the apprentice portion of the title.  As this is the first novel in a trilogy this becomes far less of an issue, as there will clearly be more assassination in the following installments, as well as the several sequels that are set after the trilogy’s conclusion.  It also is important to note that the novel was written under the working title Chivalry’s Bastard, rejected due to the profanity in the title and the difficulty that would make marketing the book.  Assassin’s Apprentice is also just a far catchier title for marketing purposes and encapsulating what Robin Hobb is doing in the novel itself while the working title is perhaps better suited to the trilogy as a whole.

 

This is due to Assassin’s Apprentice following the early life and training of Fitz, the bastard of King-in-Waiting Chivalry, from his childhood working in the king’s stables, to his training in combat before being taught in secret to be an assassin.  This is essentially the plot, one of mentorship and forming a sense of identity in the world through a series of heavily connected vignettes.  This is enhanced by Hobb’s prose which is often beautiful, taking the reader by the hand and exploring this fantastical world from the perspective of someone who has already experienced much of what it has to offer.  If Ursula K. LeGuin in Earthsea evolved from Tolkein’s prose, Hobb is the natural continuation and evolution of LeGuin’s already wonderful prose.  Hobb is easy for the reader to get lost in, devouring the novel before you realize how far you have gotten, yet upon reflection the plot itself isn’t progressing as far as the page count may have you believe.  It’s essentially a balancing act of not making the prose feel as if the word choice and sheer amount of words are covering up whatever the plot and characters are lacking that Hobb succeeds at.  Every page is imbued with so much character that the Six Duchies feel living and changing day by day, especially as this is a novel with several time jumps as Fitz begins the novel as a six year old and ends with Fitz as a young adult.  There’s never a sense that the gaps in time are wasted, the world is changing and the reader can tell almost exactly as to what has occurred in between these gaps.

 

As a fantasy novel, Assassin’s Apprentice also presents a fascinating magic system: those with the Skill can communicate telepathically with one another and those with the Wit can use the Skill to communicate and bond with animals, Hobb drawing on mythic ideas for her magic system.  This magic system is quite unique in how it is presented in Assassin’s Apprentice as while it is clearly a deep part of the world, it is something that is generally feared by the populous.  Early in the novel a dog Fitz has bonded with through childhood is taken from him to discourage getting lost in the Wit or even showing that he has these abilities for fear of being an outcast.  This is the second chapter of the book, and by this point the reader is already sharing Fitz’s emotions.  Now the magic itself then takes a backseat for much of the rest of the novel before the Skill is introduced at around the halfway point which is kind of a shame and is personally not exactly my cup of tea when it comes to fantasy, I much prefer magic to be part of the system.

 

Overall, Assassin’s Apprentice is a novel that surprised me, while not Hobb’s first novel, it was the first published under that particular name which may be why there is such a grasp of fantasy as a genre and how to elevate what fantasy was doing in the mid-1990s.  It’s a great read despite the plot being a little thin in places, the characters being wonderful at diverting from that.  8/10.