Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice (Bantam, 1995)

Once you get past the (to be expected with books these days) complete incongruity between the cover art and the book's descriptions of its characters, this is one fine debut novel. I spent way too much time flipping between passages in the book and the cover trying to figure out what planet the artist was on when he took those words and turned them into that cover. But that's just me.

Fitz, at the age of (approximately) six, is brought by the person he thinks is his father to the castle at Buckkeep and left there. We are soon apprised that, in fact, Prince Chivalry is Fitz' father, not that chap who dropped him off on the stairs (and this is about as much as we get of Fitz' live previous to his coming to the castle). Fitz is taken in by Burrich, the stablemaster, but soon enough makes himself known to the king. The king decides the boy needs to be made productive, and has him trained in the art of diplomacy from a distance-assassination.

Like all good fantasy novels (especially those that come in trilogies), the book is not only about Fitz, of course. It's also about building a believable world in the Six Duchies and the Outislands, and describing it enough that the reader can get a sense of daily life there and a grasp of its geography without going into too much detail and bogging down the story. It is in this that the majority of failed fantasy novels fail. Hobb takes to it like a fish to water (or a Fitz to assassination, as it were), giving us what sometimes seems like an Upstairs, Downstairs set in an alternate world. Fitz' parentage allows him to move between the worlds of royalty and poverty pretty much at will. A tough task for any writer, but Hobb carries it off with aplomb.

A fantastic beginning to the trilogy. ****