My Favorite Book

Back before assassins were cool (before all the Assassin's Creed hype), I picked up a book about a medieval assassin and have loved it ever since.  What's more, I love the sequels.  And the sequel to the series.  In fact, it might be my favorite book.  Written by Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice leapt to my attention when I was in my middle teens.  I'd recently read the Wheel of Time series (up to book 8 or so at that time) and I needed something else.  I wasn't particularly up on the who's-who of the fantasy world, but I did know that I loved covers by Michael Whelan.  He did Tad William's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn covers and I'd seen his work around.  So when I went into the bookstore looking for something thick (I never bought books less than 800 pages in those days) I found Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy, with a cover illustration by Michael Whelan.

I remember thinking that the cover looked an awful lot like something from The Once and Future King, or any rendition of King Arthur and Merlin.  A wizened old man holding a lantern over a boy crouched with his dog against a background of a towering castle turret.  But it was a Whelan cover and I had time back in those days to give to just about anything, so I picked it up.  This was Assassin's Apprentice, and like the genre mainstay of young boys altering the course of empires, this was a coming-of-age story, but with a twist.  Yes, the main character is the son of a prince--the crown prince, no less.  But Fitz, as our protagonist is called, is a bastard son of the prince.

Back before it was cool to identify tropes and turn them on their head, Robin Hobb was already doing it here in her Assassin trilogy.  Not only was Fitz a bastard son, he was hated and manipulated into becoming the King's assassin-in-waiting.  Trained in the use of the deadly arts, Fitz has to navigate politics both public and private, constantly glancing over his shoulder.  If being a bastard and a assassin wasn't enough, Fitz is also possessed of the two magical systems this world possesses, the Wit and the Skill.  One allows people to manipulate human thought and emotion, and is used in war and peace to the benefit of the king.  The other is "beast magic" and creates a powerful, sympathetic bond with all animals, but particularly a single animal companion.  Despised by the people, the Wit is a deadly secret that Fitz must guard at all costs.  Which inevitably means it's a secret that's going to get out.

If all this sounds complicated, it really is.  Handled by less deft hands it might have degenerated into something trite.  But Hobb handles it skillfully and weaves a masterful tale that has constantly held my attention.  It is the one book I revisit every few years, and have purchased on several occasions.  In fact, I might go so far as to say that it is my favorite book.  My favorite series.  My favorite pair of trilogies, since she wrote a sequel to the series set nearly twenty years after the conclusion of the first series.  Again, where others might have taken the story someplace trite, Hobb is able to explore not only the world she has created, but also the man her protagonist has become.  Beset by every conceivable trial, he is older, wiser, and harder, yet endearing in his foibles and virtues.  Watching the development of this character through his tempestuous childhood to the sober realities of manhood still is the highlight of my reading experience.  Though I could give you a much deeper plot synopsis, it would be inadequate to express the level of pleasure I derive from reading these books.

I love them.  I hope you will, too.