2016 read #56: Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb.

Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb
692 pages
Published 1997
Read from June 23 to July 12
Rating: ★★★ out of 5

My first review typed on our new laptop! Milestone!

Assassin's Quest is preposterously long. I have read longer fantasy tomes -- though this one is a hardback, with lots of small print packed onto each page, so it is likely longer than the mere page count would suggest -- but rarely one that lingered in a single POV for so long. Between this book, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Apprentice, we have spent over 1600 pages within the thoughts and perspective of FitzChivalry Farseer, privy to all of his annoying obsessions, repetitive ruminations, stupid decisions, and obvious mistakes, not to mention his daily routine and the usual fantasy series emphasis on his dinners and his clothes. There is no running off to catch up with other favorite characters, no breaks for when we cry out for a change of scenery; we've been stuck with him for the long haul. And as fantasy-series bloat settled in and stretched its legs and left its stuff all around the house, it got to be a little much.

There is some terrific stuff in here, emotional payoffs and tragic scenes all the more moving for having spent so much time getting to know these characters, but there is just as much if not more ridiculous crap defying the bounds of reader interest and good storytelling. Much like the recent sixth season of Game of Thrones, the contrivances of plot demanded that our characters take stupid-pills and blunder into the worst possible decisions in order to take the plot where the author wanted it to go. For instance: Say that you've just discovered that your enemy, wielding prodigious psychic powers, can readily access the mind of your friend. Then your friend proceeds to act bizarrely for the next few days. Out of the blue, your friend presses you to reveal the whereabouts of your wife and child, whose location you have kept secret from your enemy. So you... just go ahead and spill all the beans to him?

Stupid as that is, it doesn't even lead to an appreciable payoff. When a much smarter character subsequently points out how thoroughly FitzChivalry goofed, his revelation is met with a narrative shrug, as if Hobb herself couldn't be bothered to follow through on it. Other plot threads, such as the supernatural menace established surrounding the "White Ship," kind of fizzle. Nothing gets lost, per se, but events get built up and built up, and then turn out to be nothing. The worst example of this is when Fitz, caught in a reckless strike against his enemy and with no other way out, cuts himself with a poisoned blade... only for nothing to happen. The poison, you see, got wiped off through various stabbings and blade cleanings, and not enough was left to even turn the resulting scar ugly. Once again, a sound cue is necessary to convey this narrative coup.

Much of the first half (or more) of the book consists of disconnected incident, complication piling upon complication without significant impact upon the trajectory of the plot or the state of the characters -- Fitz gets to where he was going by a more circuitous route, and that is all. Long dull trudges across make-believe geography are interspersed with hectic, flailing action, in which our hero never loses for long. I do appreciate how the fights are never romanticized or pretty, and seldom feel heroic; one senses thematic continuity with Hobb's (a.k.a Megan Lindholm's) PTSD-scarred Vietnam vet in Wizard of the Pigeons. But the victories are all a bit too easy, the success of our heroes rarely in doubt, which makes all the extraneous toing-and-froing doubly pointless. Especially since the cover art essentially spoils the goddamn ending. (Spoiler: The Elderlings are dragons, and the good guys find them first.)

With all those complaints in mind, nonetheless I can't quite bring myself to dislike Quest. There's a tolerable fantasy trilogy capper encased in there, entombed in roughly 300 too many pages. I cared about the characters, and even find myself mildly drawn to continue down the numbingly long series Hobb has continued laying out, trilogy by trilogy, these last twenty years. (There appear to be fifteen novels set in "The Realm of the Elderlings," divided amongst various trilogies and tetrads, plus an additional standalone novella, and more forthcoming.) For now, however, I'm just glad to have a break at last from the sorrows of young Fitz.