Missed opportunities for love, with POISON to fill the gaps
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| Cover illustration by John Howe |
I’ve been thinking back on it fondly recently, especially after Book 2 in the series got me through a particularly bad night in early November last year. So, in a flurry of skilled Ebay searches I managed to collect the whole lot – and in mass market paperback, which is the Superior Book Format, don’t @ me, I will not be taking questions at this time. Instead, I will be doing the talking here, the first Wednesday of every month (except today, which is the second Wednesday, but starting a new endeavour on New Year’s Day is a recipe for failure, so this is absolutely a planned scheduling event and in no way a consequence of my decision to take on a 16-month reviewing project in a haze of jet-lagged ambition on January 2nd, 2025.)
My approach will be as follows: I want to remind people how great these books are as I revisit them myself. I will not be entirely blind to their faults as they emerge, but my attitude is going to highlight all the things these books do well. These books got me through a rough time, I’m going to be leaning on them as rough times continue, and only a fool picks nits when the lice are load-bearing. Or something. Look, at least it's not as bad out here (yet) as it is going to get in there. Hobb has never built a sandcastle she doesn't crush under her merciless feet.
So, how does the saga begin?
It begins with a boy, unloved and inconvenient to his family, so unloved and inconvenient that he does not even have a name. What he does have, though, is lineage: He is the bastard son of Chivalry Farseer, the oldest son of the king of the Six Duchies. His maternal family, lacking capacity for another mouth to feed, drop him off with Chivalry’s men when they swing back through town six years after the boy’s conception. Chivalry, being off on an errand somewhere, is not around, so the boy is given to Chivalry’s stable man, Burrich, to look after. Burrich, not terribly imaginative, calls the boy Fitz, short for FitzChivalry (‘Chivalry’s Bastard’), and thus is FitzChivalry Farseer named.
And ok, yes, FitzChivalry Farseer is a silly name. In fact, all of the names in the Six Duchies are pretty silly. Virtue naming is very in vogue, you understand, especially for royalty, and so we’ve got King Shrewd, with three sons: Chivalry, Verity, and Regal, borne of ancestors with names like Victory, Graciousness, Desire, all the way back to King Taker, the first settler to claim power in the land that became the Six Duchies. By the time you’ve spent several hundred pages in this world, these naming conventions make such perfect sense that you have difficulty seeing what it is that makes your best friend raise a dubious eyebrows at 'King Shrewd??' when she reads the synopsis of the book as you plan your buddy-read with her.
The plot of the book is one of the most coherent and self-contained of any of the ROTE books: political intrigue, magic, supernaturally baffling attacks from a previously unknown enemy, last-ditch political alliances, assassination, treason, betrayal, quite a lot of poison, etc, wrapped up with a reasonable bow at the end, which leaves the reader feeling like they've gotten a full story, with a conclusion and a path to resolution, but no need to keep reading if they're happy with what they've had already. (This is, as I recall, the last time it happens. The rest of the ROTE sub-series are much more like one tale split into three volumes.) All very good – but also, rather typical fantasy plot stuff. No, what makes this book brilliant is characterization and relationships – all of which are built upon a foundation of betrayals and missed opportunities for love. Remember, the book opens with a boy so unwanted that he does not even have a name. Hobb began as she meant to continue. Not for nothing is her work described as ‘misery porn’ on r/fantasy. But it’s so good! It’s such well-constructed misery porn! Again and again and again, Fitz is presented with people whom he could love, and again and again, something comes in to prevent it, to interfere with it, to make it weaker and less comforting than it might otherwise be.
You’d think, would you not, that Burrich, who does most of the work raising Fitz, would become a foster father sort, no? No. At first, Burrich treats Fitz like one of his dogs – which is to say, he keeps him fed and safe and teaches obedience. But the relationship between them is strained, because Burritch knows how to deal with dogs, and with men, and 6-year-old Fitz is neither. Also, Fitz has a magical ability to bond with animals, which Burrich regards as unnatural and obscene. When Burritch learns that Fitz has bonded with a puppy named Nosey, he rips that puppy away from Fitz, severing their bond in a single act of pain and shocking cruelty. (Yes, yes, I know, but that’s hundreds of pages later, and I didn’t know about it my first time through!)
Well, then, what about this titular assassin, whom Fitz is recruited to serve in the role of titular apprentice? Chade Fallstar, a scarred, reclusive man, teaches Fitz secretly about poison and manipulation and politics, and could be another possible mentor, another source of possible affection. But his mentorship is also conditional. He tests Fitz’s loyalty to King Shrewd, and he abandons Fitz during a truly harrowing sequence when Fitz is sent to be trained in the use of his ancestral magical ability, called Skill.
But Fitz has family, has he not? Yes, and they suck too. His father, Prince Chivalry Farseer, abdicates almost immediately and Fitz never meets him. His younger uncle, Prince Regal, sees him entirely as an obstacle to Regal’s own political machinations. Prince Verity, next in line after Chivalry’s abdication, could become a mentor, a teacher, could undo the damage caused by his disastrous Skill training – but by then the kingdom is under attack and Verity cannot be spared. King Shrewd manages to win Fitz’s loyalty by the simplest possible means: a transactional bargain. Shrewd will give Fitz a home and protection, and in return Fitz must serve him. This is not a great deal, but it is the best Fitz is offered, and his loyalty to Shrewd is ever after unshakeable.
There is only one friend whose affection is not conditional: the court jester, the Fool. A strange person, childlike and inscrutable, albino-like in appearance, prone to odd statements and insights, and incapable of articulating his meaning in anything other than riddles. But he does not betray Fitz the way Burritch does in taking Nosey away; the way Chade does in deserting him during his Skill training; the way Shrewd does in using him as a tool rather than providing for his well-being; the way his father does in deserting him. And the relationship between Fitz and the Fool will structure every other book in the series, to a greater or lesser extent.
Oh, it’s so good, NOAFers! I’m so glad to be reading these books again! Thank you for listening to my ravings as they unfold over the next 16 months!
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References:
Hobb, Robin. Assassin's Apprentice. [Harper Collins, 1995].
CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social
