Assassin's Apprentice

The cover has a quote from George R.R. Martin proclaiming this book to be a breath of fresh air, and I am inlcined to agree. The pacing is quite slow, but the focus on creating realistic, engaging characters and building a story that readers are able to invest in won me over by the time I was a quarter of the way through. The writing is beautiful for a fantasy book. It may be because this book was published over 20 years ago, and different styles were en vogue at the time, but I liked that there was only a wisp of a hinted romance, but Hobb doesn't plow indiscriminately on in that direction at the expense of storytelling and worldbuilding as happens in many modern fantasies.

Lastly, the first person perspective doesn't usually work very well for fantasy because you are so limited in scope in what you are able to see from one character's perspective, but here I think it works well because there is such a focus on the characters. Plus, there are some 15 books still including the novellas - more than enough to find out about the world.

I cried at the last paragraph.