I feel like I should acknowledge that this review is
going to be a bit problematic since the only thing I can think of comparing
Robin Hobb’s Royal Assassin to is one of her male contemporaries. Where Assassin’s Apprentice was a
coming of age story, Royal Assassin is a book which feels like A Game
of Thrones, despite being published the same year as George R.R. Martin’s
landmark in fantasy (in fact Hobb was published five months prior to Martin),
but that’s the most accurate comparison to what Hobb is doing here. This is a novel that’s far more interested in
the political machinations that act as fallout to the ending of Assassin’s
Apprentice, it's a battle of wits between Fitz, Verity, and Regal,
essentially two against one, with enemies outside of the Six Duchies on the Red
Ships throwing any of Fitz’s plans into disarray throughout the novel. The political game being played is played
perfectly, Hobb building on the world’s general fear of the Wit and Skill magic
systems perfectly while Regal clearly knows that Fitz must have some sort of
magic, though not knowing the extent of his abilities nor a immediate pathway to
prove it and use it to his advantage.
The game of cat and mouse is fascinating as because the novel is
exclusively from Fitz’s perspective, we don’t actually know if Fitz is the cat
or the mouse at various points, with evidence pointing to both ways at several points
in the novel.
There is one plot thread of Royal Assassin that
irks me and that is oddly enough the relationship between Fitz and Molly, a
ladies’ maid at Buckkeep. Molly was a
supporting character in Assassin’s Apprentice and the romance between the
pair is something that is clearly set up to be tragic which is great, but the
way Hobb plays it harkens back to more classic romance tropes that I honestly
don’t really gel with. Molly as a character
feels at several points that she only exists to serve Fitz and his romance and
doesn’t entirely have a character of her own.
The relationship is one that grows increasingly strained and eventually breaks
in a scene which is genuinely heartbreaking, but this comes after so much time
spent inside Fitz’s head lacking a real sense of Molly being presented with her
own agency which is especially odd since the other female characters don’t
suffer from this. This easily could be
an example of Fitz being an unreliable narrator, but even if that is the case it’s
something that just left me wanting.
What didn’t leave me wanting was Fitz’s journey of
self-acceptance with the Wit and the Skill.
One of the scenes from Assassin’s Apprentice which stuck in the
front of my mind was Burrich taking the dog Fitz was bonding with as a child, something
that has clearly traumatized Fitz. Early
in Royal Assassin there is wolf cub, Nighteyes, which Fitz saves from
abuse and slowly bonds with. He has to
let this wolf into his mind and be willing to open himself up to others, something
difficult to truly do due to his own isolation throughout life. It’s a journey of self-acceptance as Fitz
continually wishes to deny this, but has his mind opened to how wide the world
really is and how complex people actually are.
Hobb makes Nighteyes truly inhuman, thinking in terms of the pack and bewilderment
at the way humans lack a deep sense of sharing on all levels. Nighteyes makes Fitz better and more functional
as a human being, and when Fitz fails at the climax of the novel it’s
essentially Nighteyes who saves him as they are bound for life.
Overall, Royal Assassin is a novel that manages
to be longer than Assassin’s Apprentice while only having one thread
that keeps this from being perfect.
Robin Hobb’s tone and writing style suits this story perfectly as she
draws you in while improving slightly to make the pace work even better, with
only the issues of Molly and Fitz’s relationship really bringing it down from
being a prefect novel. Once again it
leaves things on a cliffhanger with glimmers of hope for the characters we
love, though none of them are in the best place. 8.5/10.
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