| Author | Robin Hobb |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | John Howe, Michael Whelan, Stephen Youll |
| Country | United Kingdom, United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Spectra, Voyager |
| Published | 1995–1997 |
| No. of books | 3 |
| Followed by | Liveship Traders |
My relationship with epic fantasy is…complicated. I regarded Tolkien as unreadable (I liked science fiction and so was able to preserve my nerd credentials.) I feel the same way about George RR Martin. Most fantasy struck me as portentous, pretentious and ponderous, a vain effort to appear serious.
Cracks in that attitude began to appear when I encountered Jonathan Carroll and Neil Gaiman. I liked the Lewis Carroll approach that fantasy could exist in, or at least adjacent to, the ‘real world.’ Terry Pratchett taught me that fantasy didn’t have to be humorless. I still don’t like Tolkien or Martin, but I no longer consider them the be-all and end-all of the fantasy literary universe. There’s brilliant and hard-edged Joe Abercrombie, who is sort of the Garth Ennis of fantasy, and the lyrical and loopy Scott Lynch, who is kind of the Terry Pra…oh, wait. That one’s taken, isn’t it? Anyway, between Locke Lamora and Logan Ninefingers, I found an entire universe, as real and compelling as the great science fiction works.
An article in the Guardian made mention of The Farseer Trilogy, describing it as an absolute diamond in the rough. It also described it was a great debut series by Robin Hobb. The passing reference didn’t mention that it was written 25 years ago, or that it wasn’t exactly a debut work by that particular author.
I picked up the first book in the series, “Assassin’s Apprentice.” We meet the viewpoint character, FitzChivalry, at the age of six, being dumped at the royal palace by some Fagin sort who has written the urchin off as pretty much useless, but has learned that the boy’s father was the eldest son of King Shrewd, Chivalry, and figured he could make the little bastard somebody else’s problem. Chivalry himself is dead, but it was well known he’d had a child with a commoner, and Fitz (the name literally means “bastard”) bears an unmistakable likeness. While he doesn’t present any immediate complications to the line of succession (Chivalry’s two brothers, Verity and Regal, are first and second in line respectively) potential awkwardness is avoided by putting him to work in the stables under Burrick, the stable master.
If this sounds like some sort of “Prince and the Pauper” rags-to-riches story, well, it has those elements. Hobb is far too sophisticated and complex to keep the narrative that simple, though. The entire trilogy is told in the first person limited retrospective which means the reader learns about this world and its convoluted events and politics at the same rate as FitzChivalry. And while he is the protagonist, Fitz isn’t exactly the square-jawed noble heroic sort, which makes him much more endearing.
About 100 pages in, I realized, with a delighted grin, that the prose was some of the best writing I’ve ever seen. Rich, detailed, sophisticated, and very realistic, the Farseer world sucks the reader right in. Hobb manages the neat trick of being fairly slow-paced (the trilogy is about 2,000 pages) but is never boring. Even Abercrombie has scenes where the reader glances at his watch and thinks, “Come on, Logan, just chop his head off and have done with it.” Not so with Hobb – every sentence moves the narrative forward, adding layers and details. By the end of the first book, I realized that despite the complexity and detail of the story, I was neither bored nor confused, two of the more common problems I encounter with long and windy fiction.
The pacing is immaculate, and the series builds to an utterly thunderous climax. This isn’t just great writing; this is literature.
Since reading it, I’ve learned a few things. Robin Hobb is a pseudonym. Well, I figured that out: NOBODY writing heroic fantasy has a name like that. And he’s a she. Well, understandable mistake; ‘Robin’ has male connotations to us London kids. And while Farseer is Robin’s debut series, it’s far from her first series: her real name is Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, and as Megan Lindholm she wrote “A Touch of Lavender” a debut SF novel that was nominated for the Hugo AND Nebula awards.
She has four more trilogies set in the Farseer universe all critically acclaimed.
So, um, wow. Just…wow. I think much of my summer reading is seen to.
Comments
I’m not much into fantasy either, though I do enjoy reading LoTRs and the Hobbit. Like you, I prefer science fiction. However, I would recommend Megan Lindholm’s The Wizard of the Pigeons, which blew me away.