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.5) The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince ★★★★��
1.) Assassin's Apprentice ★★★★
2.) Royal Assassin ★★★★

[2024 reread] ★★★★��

“I am glad, glad that you are alive. To see you take breath puts the breath back in my lungs. If there must be another my fate is twined around, I am glad it is you.��

this third and final book in fitz’s first trilogy was just everything to me. you all know i love a quest storyline, and as the title does hint at, there are a lot of quests for my favorite assassin in this concluding novel. truly, i could read another thousand pages of fitz on the road, picking up companions, finding out new information, and reading little story, after little story, to eventually lead up to one big masterpiece. i feel like robin hobb is so amazing at creating characters, because you not only love them, and love reading about them, but you get so attached to them and their lives. i felt fitz’s heartbreak, his rage, his happiness, his contentment, all of them so viscerally.

royal asssassin's ending was very wild to say the least, so i knew the start of this book was going to be heart wrenching, and i was indeed crying seeing fitz learn to be human again (and to contemplate if it is worth it to be human again). but in this third novel, we see him on the road with nighteyes, and on a mission to get revenge, but also on a mission to find the ones he loves - even if they are in a very different location than the mission for revenge. we get to see fitz meet different people, different minstrels, and be in different inns, different towns, who are all trying to stay safe from the forged ones who are out attacking anyone and everyone. and truly there is not much more i can say without getting into major spoilers.

let me do some other really fast, somewhat vague things that i really loved about this book: i loved all the discussions with the fool and with gender and how that can be something so fluid, and so changing, but also something others will prioritize over knowing way more than you could/ever will. i loved everything we learned about elderlings and dragons! and i really liked the first starting glimpses of a new generation being forged by war and hiding, but also by love and hope.

overall, i just can’t recommend this trilogy, and the start of this overarching series, enough. i loved this story, the heartbreak and the love that is so easily felt throughout every chapter. and i know i will carry so many of these characters with me forever. i also am so excited to finally start liveship traders because that is a brand new series for me, and i am so curious how a new cast of characters are going to maybe cross paths with fitz.

trigger + content warnings: blood, slavery, violence, death, murder, gore, seizures, mentions of animal death in past, mentions of suicidal thoughts, poison, drugging, insects, talk of abortion, talk of loss of a baby during child birth, death of a child, illness, physical assault, threat of rape, talk of rape in past, human trafficking, attempted suicide, loss of a loved one, animal abuse, ableism (in negative light), and maybe misgendering (also always in a negative light - i believe the character in this book is somewhere on the gender fluidity spectrum, and could possibly not care about any and all gender labeling, but just use care in case something like this could be triggering for you)

[2018 first read] ★★★★��

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