Assassin's Apprentice

Suffer and suffer and suffer some more, for suffering's sake. Oh, and whine, and whine, and whine while you suffer.

Come on. I get it, “kill all your darlings” and “make your protagonist suffer the worst thing you can think of, and make him go through even worse” is always being told to authors, which is why a lot of books (but especially those in the fantasy genre) are so fucking cliched and infuriating to read. This book was the same. And it's exhausting and tiresome to just have people shitting on and hating the main character and having him suffer just to suffer. How miserable to read. I didn't necessarily mind the slowness nor the training scenes; but it was like Hobb didn't know where to go with the story and just threw in all sorts of plot threads before thinking, oh yeah let's torture the character some more.

According to Hobb's own system of reviewing (“books I like get 2 stars! why is everyone mad about that?!”), this book should get negative two stars from me.

I read until the part the boy had his dog friend sent away to prevent him from using his dog-speaking powers.

The book read as a diary of daily events, nothing caught my attention. The story developed too slow.

A six years old boy was dumped at the king's castle by his grandpa, who did not want to provide for him anymore. The boy is supposedly the bastard of prince Chivalry, which upon hearing about this, abdicates his claim as next in line to the throne.

The prince's most loyal servant, his beast master, is charged to look after Fitz since he cannot be legally recognized to have royal blood. Under his care, Fitz spent a lot of times among animals, and found out he could communicate somehow with them.

This strange power is considered dangerous because of how it was used on the past, and for his own safety, the boy must never use it, on the risk of being recognized for what he is and killed for the peril he represents.

So Robin Hobb is like Brandon Sanderson where people rant and rave about how great her books are and how great the world is. I was really excited to finally be starting this series and being introduced to this world and Fitz. I was a little let down because the writing was not what I was expecting. It seemed like it took paragraphs to explain something that could be done in a sentence or two. The book also happens to be one of the shortest ones, so it worries me about the future books.

I still loved the cast of characters around Fitz. Fitz's story is definitely depressing. He basically has no one and knows no one, but I really wanted to hear his story. This book is told in the past tense and it reminded me of The Name of the Wind which I love. I liked the story, I just could not get over how longwinded the writing was.

I will definitely be continuing the series, but it will take me a while because I need time to prepare. I'm really hoping I get more used to her writing style and enjoy the sequels more.