The Farseer Trilogy

It takes a lot for me to get into adult fantasy. I'm better with YA fantasy - I don't know what it is about the worldbuilding and character development, but something snappier and less dense is what does it for me. I'm trying this year, though, to expand my reading experiences into things that I wouldn't necessarily pick up, and asked my bestie for his recommendations. He told me more than once and emphatically that I must read Hobb's Farseer books.

He finally pressed his well-worn trade paper into my hands when we visited at the end of March, and I promised that I'd start it as soon as I'd finished the serial killer book I was currently reading - I really dislike keeping a lent book too long, as it shows disrespect for having accepted the loan and of putting off the recommender's recommendation, I think. Well, if you're looking at my read dates, you'll see it took me a while to get through this. I think it's the difficulty that I have shifting into a dense world for a chapter of 15-30 pages every day or two and then having to reenter 24 or more hours later. Maybe I'd be a better adult fantasy reader if I was able to sit for hours and really immerse myself.

I really enjoyed how magic was introduced and developed in this world, and the political intrigue - once we got into the story - was well developed. The last 100 pages of this book really flew, and I found myself wishing that the entire story would have been as pacy as the finale; perhaps later books in the series are so, since the world and our characters have been well established in the first.