#and I will pass out if althea and brashen appear

[spectrum-color]

ALISE AND SEDRIC ARE PASSENGERS ON PARAGON!!!!

[psi-psina]

‘bout to die

I finished Assassin’s Fate and I need to blurt a few thingsout right now because I am LITERALLY on the fuckin brink, this book has ruined my LIFE I have loved Fitz and the Fool since I was 14 years old. Fitz especially, and I literally can’t stand this.

Firstly, the second that Bee became a POV in Fool’s Assassin I knew with the WORST kind of certainty that Fitz would die in some way or another in this trilogy, which became even clearer when he was finally allowed to ‘step out of the shadows’ and be given his true legacy in Fool’s Quest. So I was, in a way, prepared for his death to be a thing that happened, but I still just cannot abide the way that it did happen. I knew the ending, whatever it was, would be at least as bittersweet as all the other ROTE books. The ‘sweet’ in this one though, just is not there. The way it’s written, there is no closure or catharsis for Fitz and the Fool and worst of all (yes, worst of all), there is no closure or catharsis for Fitz and Bee. None. That absolutely broke my heart beyond what any other book has ever done to me. Because along with that, Fitz’s ‘death’ is prolonged and absolutely horrific, and as a READER you are forced to endure his death TWICE. The last thing we know he ever feels is “I was dying. And I had never been enough for anything.” His final thought for himself. Before that last conversation with Nighteyes. It’s so cruel and so utterly unnecessary I can’t stand it.

First of all, Fitz and the Fool. I am among the people who hoped that this trilogy would mend and bring closure to their relationship and maybe give them a life together for at least a short time. I knew upon re-reading the Tawny Man books that they would never, ever become romantic partners in this trilogy, then Fool’s Assassin made me hope again that they actually might. The painfully obvious fact that Fitz has deep feelings of love for the Fool and needs him in a way that goes far beyond ‘platonic’ is more fore-fronted than ever in that book and it’s excruciating, not least because he is never ever allowed a moment to admit it to himself, maybe not even at the very end when they merge. But we will never know. 

Their characterisation in Assassin’s Fate is absolutely heartbreaking. In every prior book, their relationship is developed meaningfully in beautiful, deeply moving character driven scenes, but in this their final book, Hobb just uses ‘Amber’ to bring their relationship to a meaningless stalemate by less than 1/3 in. It goes nowhere. She goes so far as to have Fitz perceive 'his’ Fool and Amber as two wholly different and seperate people, one of whom he loves and trusts and the other he distrusts and deeply dislikes. I will never understand why she chose to use Amber as a barrier and conflict between them in that way, it makes no sense and Fitz’s characterisation suffers for it. The Fool’s also does, though not as much. 

It’s also frustrating that she chose to make their final book one that they spend the bulk of stuck on a ship, in situations in which they have zero agency and are literally just spectators to the events going on around them. Hobb was always brilliant at avoiding this problem in her previous Fitz books, keeping the scope of them brilliantly focused in the 1st person narrative, but for this big finale she brings together characters from all the other Elderlings books, to the point that it is so sprawling that it doesn’t feel like a Fitz book at all. The result of that aspect is not satisfying in comparison to any of her other books. And yes the ROTE is certainly bigger than just Fitz but he has always been the heart of it. Absolutely the heart of it.

And unfortunately once they enter Clerres, all the characters simply start to feel empty. I honestly wish Althea, Brashen and Wintrow had not even appeared in this book. That’s the worst thing about all of it, and why this ending is so deeply upsetting and unsatisfying for me. Fitz and the Fool and Bee simply become nuts (to use some of Hobb’s own imagery) being carried passively along on this current of events she wants to happen in order to get them to this specific event in the quarry. The character-driven writing that has made all her previous books so compelling isn’t there. Fitz’s ‘fate’ in the quarry does not feel natural or inevitable, it feels rushed and contrived because all I could think of while reading it were the DOZENS of gentler and kinder and more satisfying ways he could have been brought to this conclusion. and that is the worst possible feeling the conclusion of a book can have, and one that NONE of her other books have ever suffered from.

Her choice to force Fitz straight into the quarry and his ‘death’ right after Clerres and giving him and Bee less than one day together and not one single moment for redemption or healing before being parted forever is....after everything Bee endured....after enduring Fitz’s continuous agonising and grief for her....it is so cruel. :/ it FEELS so cruel because it was so utterly unnecessary. There is absolutely no conceivable reason Fitz could not have been allowed to return to Buck with everyone and have YEARS with Bee and the Fool before making his inevitable way back to the quarry, and his fate.

Then there is Bee. This trilogy should not have been called “Fitz and the Fool”. Even though you finally learn the Fool’s history, this trilogy is not about them, it is about Fitz and Bee, and my heart is even more broken by what was denied them. I came to love Bee as deeply as Fitz almost as soon as she became a POV. This is Bee’s trilogy, and it becomes irrevocably so when Hobb made the final two mini-chapters of the book, the end of Fitz’s life, something that is simply witnessed by Bee, something that is framed as simply another nexus that all the remaining pieces disperse from as Bee sets out from this event onto her next chapter. We get no final afterword or closing thoughts from Fitz. That just...broke me. The fact that we don’t even experience Fitz and the Fool’s final merging and subsequent ‘passing’ through Fitz’s eyes is beyond excruciating and made it feel so horribly empty. The one, tiny bit of catharsis she could have given them, she chose not to. I will never understand why she made the choice to write it that way and it will haunt my heart forever. 

I’ve never been inconsolable after reading a book before but here I am lol. I’ve never cried so much reading a book in my life. I also gotta say though, it speaks to what a magnificent writer Robin Hobb is that this is still one of the best pieces of fantasy writing you will ever read and there is basically no other writer who is a match for her voice. I just wish that this ending could have been more in the realm of soft and melancholy rather than harrowing and life-ruining.

I absolutely loved the first two books, Fool’s Assassin and Fool’s Quest were both absolutely beautiful and harrowing and bittersweet and deeply moving and I practically screamed when Fitz met Paragon in Assassin’s Fate (a moment that is second only to when Bee kills Symphe and Dwalia), this trilogy has, overall been the biggest ‘ride’ of any of her trilogies since The Liveship Traders so I am just...so gutted that she did Fitz like that in the end.