Fantasy novels, more than novels in any other genre, tend to fall victim to the same story arc: a young man unaware of his own noble birth grows up in humble surroundings, at least until a grizzled veteran reveals to the young man his heroic destiny (and the breathless, inevitably beautiful woman who awaits at the end, like a prize). What is striking about Robin Hobb's The Farseer Trilogy is that, although it retains many of the trappings of a traditional fantasy story--the pseudo-medieval setting, the presence of magic, and so on--it ends up delivering an original and at times depressingly honest story that rarely falls back on the fantasy genre's usual tropes.

Another striking feature of The Farseer Trilogy trilogy is, of course, how exhilirating it is: a gripping tale of hardship, love, betrayal, and magic. (Indeed, the series kept me up until the crack of dawn two nights in a row, well past my bedtime.) The story begins quietly enough, with young Fitz's earliest memories of being dragged into court by a foster father who no longer wishes to keep charge of a prince's bastard. Fitz is the unlikely child of Prince Chivalry, the king-in-waiting, and Fitz's sudden appearance at court--with its revelation of the one dark spot in Chivalry's otherwise pristine past--sparks a political furor that reverberates for years. But Fitz is mostly unaware of what is going on around him: as a bastard he is hardly considered to be on the same level as other royal children, and so he spends his childhood in the stables with Burrich, the stablemaster of the court. For some reason, however, the aging king takes an interest in Fitz's upbringing, and one night a secret door opens in Fitz's bedroom--a door that leads up to the chambers of a master assassin who will train Fitz to a new way of life. But although Fitz takes avidly to his training for a life in the shadows, public events soon intrude upon his private lessons. The Red Ship Raiders have begun devastating the coast, seeming to seek nothing but destruction, and soon the attempts to eradicate the Raiders drags Fitz into complex political and magical intrigues that he never intended to join.

It's hard to find fault with Hobb's trilogy without nitpicking. About the only fault I can reasonably bring up is that the third book, Assassin's Quest, begins slowly and moves somewhat haphazardly--but it soon settles down into a conclusion just as feverishly exciting as the first two books. Everything else is nearly flawless. Hobb's plotting is plausible but seldom expected, her characters are deep, fully rounded, and consistent, and the fantasy world she has created seems utterly believable--events oftentimes occur well outside the domains of the protagonists (thus avoiding the problem of many fantasy novels, where events only seem to occur where the main characters happen to be), the politics is complex yet never confusing nor overly hasty, and her use of magic is sparse but significant (especially at the conclusions of the second and third books).

The best thing about The Farseer Trilogy, however, is that it never draws back from subjecting the characters to whatever pain realistically awaits them, making the trilogy far darker than other more optimistic series--especially in its conclusion, which is bleaker than even I expected. As a result, The Farseer Trilogy will not be an easy series to reread--by the end you care too much about the characters to want to see them wrung through the same set of painful events--but the first time through is a ride no fan of fantasy should miss.

Copyright © 2002 Steven Wu