Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy, #1) in Fantasy Buddy Reads

Oct 22, 2015 Olivia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

Assassin's Apprentice is a slow burn filled with beautiful prose and I fell in love with the main character, Fitz, right away. He has a lot of depth and is well developed. When we first meet him he's a very young boy, though mature, he's innocent and naive and Hobb does a good job at letting him grow and become his own person. This book has all the elements fantasy usually has, right down to the poor bastard son that turns out to be special, but Hobbs is a truly gifted writer and combines the el ...more

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Aug 17, 2020 Kaila rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, portland-reddit-book-club, im-not-crying-youre-crying, 2020, animals-are-better-when-they-talk, magic, assassins, i-own-this, fantasy-politics, very-good-boys

This is a reread from a few years ago. I thought it was just so-so at the time, but I'm upping my review by a star this time around. I can't tell if it is because I knew bad things were going to happen so I was better prepared, if I have matured, or if my taste in fantasy has changed, but I felt more willing to be along for the ride than last time. Perhaps a combination of all three. People change a lot in a decade.

Animals play a large role in the story and the magic of this world and animals ar ...more

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Feb 03, 2019 Kavitha Sivakumar rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nk-btb-2019

Absolutely entrancing!

Thanks to Manju for this wonderful reco :)

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Dec 11, 2017 Lars Martin rated it liked it · review of another edition

When I read this book I kept asking myself: What is the point of fantasy?

Patrick Rothfuss said in an interview that while crime fiction and other fiction tries to answer the question "what is", fantasy tries to answer the question "what if". So what is the "what if" of the story? I don't know. Are there any? Perhaps. It might be the forging, where victims of pirate raidings come back soulless and mindless.

Beth Webb says that fantasy is the psychological process by which a child learns to fill th ...more

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Feb 04, 2018 Phillip rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, read-in-2018

Despite the fact that Assassin's Apprentice checks nearly all the boxes for the first novel of a generic fantasy trilogy - a young boy (check), born of royal blood (check), possessing strange and forbidden powers (check), begins training (check) in a variety of skills and arts that will aid him as the King's assassin - it somehow manages to never come across as old hat. I think this is due to Robin Hobb's deliberate, precise writing style, and because while using familiar genre tropes, she manag ...more

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