Assassin's Fate by Robin HobbMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I can't be objective with this book.
Maybe with all the other books of the Realm of the Elderlings series I was able to measure and consider things carefully. I still think the best are the Liveship Traders books. They have a tight storyline, well divided among it's ensemble cast, where every character finds a satisfying ending, even when they don't get what they wanted.
The book that had made me cry most horribly was Fool's Fate. That was the book that made me utterly fall in love with Fitz and Beloved's relationship. I still remember the final scenes and all my favorite dialogues. I still hold it as an example of how to write a selfless character or deep-hearted love, even when it's unrequited.
At first I wasn't happy with the ending. I never liked Molly and Fitz together because of how troubled and sometimes even abusive the relationship was. On both sides. But I read those books when I was in college, sometimes during class when I should have been doing something else. Since then I have grown and matured and somehow it seems so probable and natural that Fitz might want something that isn't exactly what he needs. People don't always love the person who loves them most or best, but we can't control it. It is to the Fool's credit that he accepts this and let's Fitz live the life he wants, even if it's a boring life and a settled one. I cried about as much when the Fool left as I did when he died. Their parting left me bitter and melancholic.
But this book broke my heart.
I was expecting it. I had feared it. Bee was a protagonist now and we didn't absolutely need Fitz alive for the end. But I didn't think she would dare. If nothing else I'll take to heart Hobb's cold blood when killing characters. It wasn't a massacre the way Martin's deaths are, but she killed exactly who she needed to kill, no more, no less.
People say Kennitsson wasn't exactly necessary, but I felt for him and I was as angry and proud of his death as I was for Fitz and the Fool. I imagine Etta and Wintrow and Sorcor and the promise that Paragon Ludluck's life represented, somehow a life free of cruelty to bring light to his father's dark history, and I think only such a life would have been fair exchange for a dragon's rebirth.
There was nothing fair about how Fitz died.
I was furious. I read all night trying to get to the end of the book and prove that he couldn't really die like this, so painfully, so soon. I cried from 8 am to 11 am. I cried because Fitz deserved his rest and a clean death, to fall asleep by Molly's side and never wake up. Fitz deserved never to have to leave a child of his yet again.
But Fitz so rarely got what he deserved in life, why should he get it in death?
This was as tight a book in its own way as the Liveship ones were. The dying messenger was there so we could know how Fitz would die. Kennitsson was there so Paragon would live.
And the Fool was back, so that he and Fitz could be together in the stone wolf, the way they had never been when alive.
It was bitter and not satisfying. I felt a horrible dread to think that one could love someone so deeply and desire a life with them and know they would never be loved back and in the end have to settle for an ugly death and an eternity in the memory stone. But Fitz and Beloved's lives were never about living them, but about giving them away for a greater purpose.
I felt cheated and heartbroken and desolate... but I also felt vindicated. This book did not end with the hope and happiness of Fool's Fate, but it ended with a future. Bee's future and the world's future, both bought with the lives and suffering of two of the characters I have loved most in all my life.
I hope you hunt well Stone Wolf.
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