Friday Reads: Fool’s Fate, Take Two

(A Note: Following is a review of the sixth book in a series, but this review will remain spoiler free!)

I know I already talked about this book on the blog to a certain extent, but to be honest, one post isn’t enough. Ten posts wouldn’t be enough to aptly review a series that, in its final installment, did more for me in one book than some series manage in their entirety. Starting with the first book of The Farseer Trilogy and ending five books later with the conclusion of The Tawny Man Trilogy, Robin Hobb created a series of novels that is unique in its depth, breadth of emotion, and I have no doubt that the story will stay with me for a long time to come.

For those who haven’t read any of the series yet, The Farseer Trilogy and The Tawny Man Trilogy can be described as the story of a king’s bastard growing up learning to be an assassin. You could say it’s a story about changing fate, or about dark magic, or falling in love with the person you can never be with. All of those things would make it sound more cliche than it really is. The fact is that it’s about the characters and their relationships with each other. It’s about a boy who was abandoned when he was five years old and raised in the stables, and how that creates walls in his life, and how he tries to befriend people and find some kind of peace with all of the craziness in his life.

The plot is interesting, but it’s the characters that really sell the whole thing. It uses the fantasy genre as a lens to show real, human problems, and that’s where I think the genre is strongest. I’ve talked a little before about the relationship between historical fiction and fantasy and how fantasy novels feel stronger and more solid when they have that one foot in reality, and I think the same is true here. Dragons, magic swords, kings and all are great, but they mean nothing without connecting us to them through incredible, real characters. These books really get that.

As for this book in particular… To be honest, I approached Fool’s Fate with a mix of dread and excitement. It was another book about Fitz and The Fool–his fool. It was also the last book. The ending of a series is a tricky feat. It’s so easy for things to fall flat and by the end of a long running series, there are so many threads that there’s no possible way you can tie them up. I’m still smarting from the ending to Battlestar Galactica! That’s another story for another day, though.

I got increasingly nervous as the book reached its conclusion and the final threads of the plot were resolved with 200 pages to spare. But Hobb’s books have always been about the characters, and the long denouement that followed the central events of the book created one of the richest, most satisfying conclusions I could imagine. The series shows characters grow from children to adults, characters die over the course, and some are born, but all of them are changed by the events of the series.

It all came down to three words, and they were the three perfect words to end on.