The Farseer and The Tawny Man trilogies, Robin Hobb

[Syn]

Author: Robin Hobb

Books:
The Farseer Trilogy
- Assassin's Apprentice
- Royal Assassin
- Assassin's Quest

The Tawny Man Trilogy
- Fool's Errand
- Golden Fool
- Fool's Fate

Genre: Fantasy

Due to relationship and continuity between these six books (two trilogies), I decided to mention them all at once. Another reason for this is the fact that I was so immersed in them when I was going through them, that I can hardly separate each of them. The only problem was that it's been a few months since I did The Farseers and a few weeks since I did The Tawny Man (I don't mean sexually) so my memory of details isn't all that well.
But now that my emotions about them lessened, I feel that I can be more objective about the whole thing. I'll also try to keep this as spoiler free as possible.
With all that in mind, I loved them!
I loved the story, I loved the way they were written and I absolutely loved the world. The magics, the Skill and the Wit, felt so natural, that I found myself thinking about why they weren't real. I loved the subtlety of it and the fact that they were not battle oriented, like in most fantasy books.
The basic story premise is that a young boy was brought to the court and introduced as the King-in-waiting's bastard son. The King-in-waiting abdicated the throne and left the boy to be cared for by one of his men. The boy later got trained to be a royal assassin, which you could have guessed from the titles.
The story features political struggles mixed with personal feelings of the bastard, since it's written in the first person view, coupled with the magics of the world. One of the things I really liked, possibly the most, in the whole story were the characters. Some of them were really great and memorable, each having their own detailed personality, and character interactions among themselves were at times *very* touching. I'm not ashamed to say that there were tears in my eyes more than once, especially in the very last book.
One of the things that also intrigued me here was the fact that the 'hero' of this book wasn't really a typical hero. He wasn't all powerful and all knowing. In fact, he was often quite incompetent, and that's probably the reason why he appealed so much to me. He was truly a made hero, not a born one.
However, the book was a bit slow at times. For example, the entire Golden Fool (fifth book, second in The Tawny Man trilogy) seemed a bit slow and uneventful. But if looked from a larger perspective, scoping the entire series, it did connect and built up for its sequel well.
As for the writing style, truth be told, I wasn't paying much attention to it. It was a bit new to me at first because I wasn't used to the first person style, but it worked very well for the book.
All in all, I have to say that I'd recommend it to anyone who loves a good politically oriented fantasy novels focused more on character development than on fighting.