Have you ever read a book that is the end of the beginning? Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb is just that as it is the final book in The Farseer Trilogy which is also the first of five series in The Realm of the Elderlings. It continues where the previous book, Royal Assassin, left off with Fitzchivalry working on recovering from his time as a captive in Regal’s dungeon and faking his death afterwards. As he works on recovering both physically and mentally he pushes both Chade and Burrich away and ends up with only Nighteyes for company. Eventually he decides that he is going to utilize the skills he has been taught in order to kill Regal, with Nighteyes help. As he travels across the six duchies to do so he also discovers that things are rather perilous with practically no protection left against either the red ship raiders or against the depredations of Regal’s men. Convinced he is doing the right thing he continues on while dodging soldiers, random villager after a potential reward and disturbing rumors along with the odd attack by Regal’s skill users. Due to a variety of events, he ends up abandoning his plans against Regal to instead seek out Verity, deep in the mountains.
This was a pretty good book and a fitting end to the trilogy but at the same time I also could tell where the story seemed unfinished, at least in part. The book did a great job of wrapping up the continuing fight against the red ship raiders, even if the exact manner of it doing so was more than a little unexpected. At the same time it also wrapped up the inheritance dispute between Verity and Regal, again in a rather unexpected manner. In both cases it was a rather fitting end though. At the same time I felt like there was a lot of things left unexplored, such as why the red ships started attacking in such great numbers, what exactly did the Fool mean when he referred to Fitzchivalry as the catalyst, and any number of other smaller things as well. There is a lot of background information and minor threads that could easily still be picked up on to continue a story either in this world or for these characters. The lore that was introduced in this series was rather fascinating and relatively unique so I am curious to see how it will be further developed in the future books. There was a few things that I wasn’t a huge fan of. A big one is how the story seemed to have a slower pace than the previous book. It felt like it took longer for things to develop and to come together. I know it may not have actually been a longer length of time but it definitely felt slower to me. It didn’t affect the story too much but I did notice the difference in pacing at times. The speed and pacing really only started to pick up towards the end of the book, which does make sense actually, but it was still noticeable to me. Overall, a good book and a good ending to this series while still leaving the stage open for further stories and exploration. I am happy giving this book four out of five stars.
This book is a pretty good example of an adult fantasy novel and one that I would recommend to readers who prefer that genre. It falls closer to the sword and sorcery type than the urban fantasy type so readers should keep that in mind when considering it. This book is also the third book in this timeline or series so you should also consider reading the previous books to be better prepared and have a good understanding of events. With this book being primarily aimed at adult readers I would caution younger readers to be careful before reading this. It contains decent but not exorbitant levels of violence so it would be okay for young adults or older teens but probably not for younger teens. Outside of that I don’t think there was any content unsuitable for that age range. It is a pretty good book and I hope you will consider reading the series. As always feel free to share your thoughts about this book or this series in the comments.