ROYAL ASSASSIN | Non-Spoiler Review 

Ah *"Fitz repeatedly getting his ribs kicked in by life"* Book 2. Yay!

RA is one of my favorite books of all time. 20 years later, I still remember how it hit me. I’m re-reading it very soon for the first time, and couldn’t look forward to it more. Glad you’re loving her stuff.

I’m so glad you love Robin Hobb so much. I love her, she is an amazing author, completely agree that she everything with such heart and expertise

I'm so glad you liked it! I binged the whole trilogy in December and it's already become one of my favourites. I'm so excited to start Liveship Traders!

Robin Hobb can break your heart on the best way possible. I may have gifted the Farseer trilogy to a friend because I needed to be able to talk to someone about it. 🤣

I absolutely love Hobb! She shot to the top 3 of my favorite authors last year and I'm currently on Liveship Traders Trilogy! So glad you love them too!

Great review. I can't wait for you to read Assassin's Quest! Hobb is my absolute favorite author. Her characters feel like real people you know. So the pain is even more painful.

I’m so glad you liked it! I love the first farseer trilogy. One of my favourites. I also really loved the second fitz trilogy. I’m currently reading the liveships for the first time and must say, that it reads differently from the fitz books, mainly because there are multiple povs in third person narrative. Sadly, I don’t enjoy them as much as everybody else seems to (still 5 stars, 3 stars and probably another 3 stars, though. So it’s not bad at all). I’m almost finished with ship of destiny and am excited to join fitz again, soon. (I’m currently reading all of the elderlings books in order, including rereads of fitz’ 1st and 2nd trilogy. The rest are new to me and I am excited!)

"Five Stars of Feelings" haha I love that!! I'm 30 pages away from finishing this, uff.

I can't wait to read Royal Assassin. Assassin's Apprentice is so good. Thank you.

I'm so glad you liked the book! I love every Fitz and Fool series. I agree...I love her writing style even with the emotional roller coaster she puts you through. I started the Liveship Traders and Rain Wild Chronicles, but struggled to get into them at the time. But you don't have to read those series and if you are mostly interested in the Fitz/Fool story lines, you can skip them (just FYI for anyone wondering). However, I understand that they help give context and background and my opinion may not be a popular one. :) I actually feel the need to re-read everything and add in the other series.

I read this series decades ago & still remember the melancholy & heartbreak. Hearing you & Mara talk about them made me want to pick them up again, but the melancholy & heartbreak... I never read past The Farseer Trilogy but maybe your reading of it will inspire me to.

I whooping out of the top of my lungs. I'm so excited that you loved it and ai love what you said about it and I agree with it so much. Robin Hobb is my new favourite author since last year. I now read 9 books in the Realm of the Elderlings (finished Tawny Man last month and when you get to that series, you will definitely binge read those books if not before). Afterwards, I made my only birthday wish (getting 19 next week) to get the rest of the books in the series😅💕. Also, Patience is within my top 3 favourite female characters. And now, after you not only love Red Rising but also Farseer so far, I Know that should finally read The Blade itself this year. Trusting your taste😘 But prepare yourself for Assassin's Quest being quite an unusual series finale. And it's quite different in tone from Royal Assassin but no less beautiful (my favourite book in that series together with Ship of Destiny so far) and I believe you'll love it too. And prepare to feel even more 😘

I love this trilogy so much, and the entire Realm of the Elderlings is my favorite fictional series of all time. Her characters feel like real people and her prose is so beautiful. Assassin's Quest broke me but it's so good!

I own the mass market paperback and the illustrated anniversary edition of Assassin's Apprentice, and I currently have both lent out to friends because I need people to gush about the Realm of the Elderlings with!! I love seeing more people on Booktube joining the Hobb hype train :D

Loooove this book, I'm fairly new to your channel (yay worldhoppers!) and excited to see our tastes largely match up 💜💜💜

So late to the party. But on your comment about strong female characters, I love how Lady Patiance's strength is so different to the Queen's and Molly's.

The comparison to Abercrombie is something that churned around in my brain forever but I never really managed to voice the thought. You hit it exactly. ps: I agree with all the rest as well.

I'm excited to read this one in March. I read AA in January so I'm waiting on a buddy read group to read AA this month then we continue on. I really liked AA and can't wait to see where this all goes.

I love Fitz and Robin Hobb! Prepare yourself for a slower third book and a super break heart for the Liveships, happy reading!

I'm currently reading this one!

I see you making me want to pick this one up! I can’t wait for you to get to the Liveship Traders!!!!!!!!!

Royal Assassin is fantastic. Get ready for a lot of traveling and adventure in the next book, and it'swonderful. I do feel that Assassin's Quest could have been trimmed down in some places to make it a bit tighter, but overall it's just as great as Royal Assassin in my opinion. Many of the best parts of the trilogy are in it and large chunks of the book are truly brilliant and beautiful storytelling. Liveship Traders by itself is in my top 5 favorite series I've ever read. Can't wait for you to get to it. Pirates, giant sentient sea serpents, living ships with talking figure heads (it's not cheesy what-so-ever) epic multi-pov with a huge cast of diverse characters. It's phenomenal! Thinking about it is making me want to read it again! lol

Sorry, watching this very late, but I LOLed on "Ships that are sentient--that sounds kind of stupid." Man, am I with you. In those same terms, I've rarely found a fantasy animal-friendship storyline that is so satisfying as Fitz and Nighteyes. I'd feel like, "He finds a wolf and they can telepathically converse," would sound equally stupid. But, damn. I have been agog since I stood where you stand (two books in), and I have never lost that feeling. Cheers to you for the journey ahead!

I loved that book!

Somehow I missed that this review happened Hobb hype train engage. Queen of the genre. Get ready for some boats that are 3 dimensional complex characters, with great character arcs, and nuanced relationships.

Fitz! Nighteyes! It’s been +20y i’ve read this but it’ll stay with me forever. Lifeship traders is even better

I wonder if one of the reasons Fitz is so likeable is that everyone else in the books is so judgmental towards him. Like jeez, they should cut him some slack; he's trying his best!

I feel like Hobb is having a resurgence and now I want to try it

Realm of the Elderlings is the GOAT. Hobb is a fantastic author. Every detail is necessary and she doesn’t force ideas and perspectives down your throat, I didn’t find any characters to be cardboard cut outs- they felt like people. Nuanced, flawed, brilliant, repugnant, resilient. But you feel those things, and you long suspect the bs before it’s revealed to Fitz. I am most definitely starting a re-read of RotE this year... Also you’ve pushed me over the line and the next big purchase of books will include Abercrombie.

I just finished the first book. Looking forward to Fitz's Pain Simulator 2.0.

Robin Hobb broke my heart with this one. 5/5

not mentioning nighteyes at least once is against geneva conventions!

Liked the first one, but I didn't engage with it as much as I wanted to. I'm hoping I can lock into the sequel a bit more, as it apparently jumps around a bit less?

Who is your favorite character so far ( beside Fitz)?

Assassin's Quest... oh my, oh my. Hobb has no qualms stomping our feelings repeatedly into the ground.

Your point about RH's character work is well-made. I think you can only appreciate the Farseer trilogy (and Tawny Man and Fitz & Fool, for that matter) if you're on board with the character of Fitz. So much angsty self-pity, so much misery and melodrama, but the roller coaster worked for me through that first trilogy. Yep, lots of grim & dark happenings, as you say, but Hobb's protagonists always retain a sense of optimism and idealism which lifts her books out of "grimdark". The tone is always too earnest to be cynical. It's the inability of Fitz's character to then progress through the later trilogies - and my inability to reach into the f@cking book and slap some damned sense into the man - that wore me down by the end. I don't think it's too spoilery [because, duh: book titles] to note that in the later books the Fool becomes a more interesting - and arguably more central - character than Fitz himself. Liveship Traders in contrast failed for me for the same reason that Farseer worked: none of the characters held my interest. Furthermore, despite the premise there was a shocking dearth of piracy and general buckling of swash. It's unforgivable to tease the reader with the promise of high seas roister-doistery only to underwhelm with meh.

Hello i am on page 513 of Royal Assassin and I love it. I read the first book last year and for me was good but not great. But this book change my feelings about the series.

Assassin's Apprentice was way too slow for me, but this sounds intriguing - wait, what? Character work like Abercrombie's? Okay, okay, okay.

i read the whole trilogy, back to back, i finished Assassins Quest yesterday night, and man Fitz needs a fucking break, from his enemies as much as his friends/allies, also Fitz is apparently only 20 at the end of the trilogy and that's insane

I completed first book in farseer trilogy. Started second book.. But the world is so bleak..life just keeps kicking Fitz when he is already down I couldn't go on.. so I took break and started reading Joe Abercrombie. The world is bleaker but here I found character having (twisted) sense of humour. I found Narrative/thought process of characters in blade itself funnier than Assassin's apprentice. So I'm continuing before they are hanged . I read the chapters during breakfast and listen to those chapters through audiobook during commute. It's so fantastic... What I'm trying to say is - sand,jezal,logen are funnier than Fitz. Fitz gets mercilessly abused by world.. Fitz felt like a victim. I cant complete those books, not easily.. I just kept feeling sad. Sand,logen are feeling like survivors. perspectives from characters like dogman help out to make logen more fleshed out. I have bawled out reading dogman's chapters in before they are hanged but there's catharsis. Reading Fitz was like getting kicked in guts non stop..

I know people love this book, but I thought it was significant step backwards from Assassin's Apprentice. I also DNFed Assassin's Quest. But I know I'm in the minority.

Wolves have no kings 🐺

I don't know Liene, I think Robin Hobb just can't write a believable male character. First off men rarely, if ever, make dumb mistakes. Second, teenage boys are very well known for picking up on a girls signals especially if that girl likes him. jk lol I just finished Assassin's Apprentice last week and thought that it was great. I'm waiting on Royal Assassin to arrive, but was wondering where did you get those editions of the books? Because the ones I got have horrible covers and look like Harlequin Romance novels. lol