Review: Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb

At its core, this book creates a fun new world that is filled with some interesting characters (albeit with dumb names like Chivalry, Verity, Shrewd, Regal, and Patience), but the story really, really takes its time. Everything is developed slowly, plodding here and there, dragging out small details, meandering off to random tangents, focusing on training, and then an adventure, then a failure, then a mishap, followed by a mysterious occurrence, then a little love story on the side, and oh, look, puppies, and hors—BAM, out of nowhere, crazy stuff happens, and the book is over. I’m guessing this was originally written as one long story rather than a trilogy, and after chopping the book into several parts, some artificial “endings” were inserted at the last minute.

Overall, it’s a fun read, but not my favorite style of fantasy story. Part of the reason is that it relies too much on magic. There’s nothing wrong with having magic in a fantasy story, but you have to define the rules and limitations of that magic. This book leaves all the details vague—e.g., we never really understand what the “Wit,” “Skill,” or “Forging” can and can’t do—and you find that when a character solves a seemingly impossible problem using heretofore unseen magic, it just feels like a cop out. It’s a classic case of deus ex machina.

That said, this book is the first in the trilogy, and clearly designed as an origin story. I suspect we’ll see more character development and learn more about the magic of this world in future books, so it’s entirely possible many of my concerns will be answered then.

Rating: 3 stars