Recommended Reading: The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb

I've been trying to compose a post on Robin Hobb all day, and I keep getting stuck. Over the past few months, I've read a total of three completely epic trilogies by Hobb: the Farseer trilogy, Liveship Traders, and Tawny Man. All of them were brilliant, and after trying to condense my thoughts into one blog, I realized they each needed their own post. So, for today, we'll concentrate on her first trilogy, the Farseer books.

The Farseer series centers around FitzChivalry Farseer, bastard son to Prince Chivalry, who steps down as King-in-Waiting after Fitz's grandfather dumps him unceremoniously with a royal guard to be taken care of by his father. Fitz never gets a chance to so much as meet his father. Instead, he's put under the care of the prince's man, Burrich, a gruff stablemaster who houses him with his prized dogs.

The story is told from the perspective of Fitz later in life, looking back on what's happened to him. This is one of the huge strengths of the story - everything we see, we see from Fitz's point of view. We may have an idea of the motivations and stories of other characters based on what he sees and hears, and the perspective he is able to provide, but it is wholly Fitz's story, and he is a compelling character.

After his father flees the royal residence, Buckkeep, in shame, Fitz slowly becomes integrated with the rest of his family: King Shrewd, Prince Verity and Prince Regal. The names are significant, and given to the royals in this particular family to mark the qualities they are expected to most strongly exhibit. Shrewd decides to use his illegitimate grandson to his advantage, making him an apprentice to the royal assassin and starting him on a path that will ultimately shape his entire childhood.

Without giving too much away, over the course of the three books (each coming in at several hundred pages), Fitz not only grows up and faces serious challenges to his life and the lives of those he cares about, he also experiences the benefits and pitfalls of the two major types of magic that exist in this particular universe: the Wit and the Skill. The Wit is an old magic, the ability to bond and communicate with animals, and a type of magic that is generally thought of around the kingdom as dark and wrong; the Skill is the magic of the Farseer line, an ability to communicate with other Skill users over long distances, in addition to other mental powers. Through his mixed parentage Fitz has gained both of these, and one of his most powerful relationships in the books is with a wolf, Nighteyes, who he bonds with while they are both still very young.

Fitz's other important relationships center around the new King-in-Waiting (his uncle Verity), who he comes to admire strongly and pledges his life to in as many ways as he can; Burrich, who is the closest thing Fitz really has to a father; Chade, the royal assassin who takes Fitz under his wing; and the Fool, an albino prophet who believes Fitz's destiny is tied solidly to the destiny of the entire world. The Fool plays an increasingly large part throughout the trilogy and becomes vital in the later Tawny Man books, and his relationship with Fitz is murky and tightly wound.

One of the weaker points of this trilogy is probably Fitz's love interest, Molly. She never really feels like an adequate foil for Fitz, and since it's told from his perspective, it's hard to say whether this is intentional - maybe she is not meant to be his true love - or a mistake on Hobb's part. She is supposed to be beautiful and tough, but she never elevates beyond that, and she seems to see Fitz more as a bad choice she can't help making than anything more substantial. Luckily, she is more of a background character than anything else, and their relationship is definitely a subplot and not the main substance of the book. And there are a few great female characters to make up for Molly's lack of much uniqueness - Kettricken, Verity's mountain-born queen, who starts out a scared and impulsive girl and turns into a strong, regal presence, as well as Patience, Chivalry's wife, who first shows up as a scattered and flighty woman but, again, ultimately comes into her own power and proves herself more than worthy.

The looming threat in the books comes from the Red Ship Raiders, enemies from the Outislands who "Forge" the people they capture in their raids, effectively removing their emotions and morals and basically turning them into zombies. There are some harrowing scenes of raids in the books, with villagers killing themselves and their children rather than be Forged, or of Forged ones killing each other over a shiny brooch or piece of food. Part of Fitz's job as apprentice assassin becomes going out with poisoned bread and sword to kill roaming Forged ones, and through his Skill he experiences nightmares that are actually visions of ongoing raids on people in the Six Duchies, his kingdom.

I really can't say enough good things about these books. I could type out pages and pages about the complexity of Fitz's bond with the Fool, or the depth of his codependent connection with Nighteyes, or his tumultuous and often unhealthy father-figure relationships with Burrich, Verity and Chade. Hobb has built a fully-formed world here, one that it's easy to dive into and get lost in for days, weeks, months, years. The Farseer trilogy stands on its own as epic and compulsively readable fantasy, and when combined with the Tawny Man series (which brings us back to many of the same characters), it is really a masterpiece of fiction. Each book is more absorbing than the last as the characters and setting start to feel more like home, and the story becomes more and more complex and captivating. Definitely worth the many hours of reading it takes to get through them.

Review: "The Gathering" by Kelley Armstrong

At first, Maya seems like just a normal teenage girl. Going to school, hanging out with her friends, occasionally dating. Wanting a tattoo and teasing her dad. Living in a tiny town, built around a medical research facility, on a secluded island.

Healing wild animals. Watching her champion swimmer best friend drown. Feeling a mysterious urge to run through the woods at night. Bonding with cougars. Getting called "skin-walker" by a crazy old lady. Stumbling across dead bodies and uncovering family secrets. You know, normal teenager stuff.

Kelley Armstrong is a gifted writer. All of her books have fabulous protagonists, characters whose heads you can really get into through her words and story. Maya is no exception. She is a confident young woman, driven and hardworking. She's athletic and smart. But she's no Mary Sue. She's a three-dimensional and fully-relatable character, even as her life is turned upside-down by a series of confusing revelations that aren't exactly status-quo.

Anyone who has read Armstrong's Otherworld series, or her other young adult trilogy, will have a general idea of the world hidden underneath Maya's reality. (And if you haven't read the Otherworld books - get on it. They are ridiculously addictive.) "The Gathering" is the first in a new trilogy, and its greatest weakness is that in some ways it feels like an extended introduction. A lot happens, but not much gets resolved. That's okay - it is still a compelling and worthwhile read - but with a year to wait until the next book, it is also a little frustrating.

Armstrong's young adult books are great in that she doesn't sacrifice complexity. These stories are not dumbed down for a younger audience - really, the main difference is that the narrators are teenagers instead of adults, and the grown-up Otherworld books have much, uh, steamier scenes mixed throughout. Armstrong writes a great sex scene, but the relationships in "The Gathering" and the "Darkest Power" trilogy manage to sizzle even without the sex. As much as I hate love triangles, she has created equally compelling potential love interests for Maya in the characters of best friend Daniel and mysterious bad boy Rafe (Although of course she'll end up with Rafe. Who doesn't choose the bad boy?).

This trilogy, like the last YA trilogy, is set in the same world as the Otherworld books, with the St. Cloud cabal lurking evilly in the background. At some point one would assume these crazy kids who have been the subject of the St. Cloud's experiments will find their way to each other. I wouldn't mind if they found their way to the adults in the Otherworld, too, but I would imagine that book is quite a ways down the line. For now, I'll just have to wait until the next installment of this series. Or at least until the next Otherworld book comes out this summer.

Bottom line: If you like horror/scifi/fantasy, strong female protagonists, or just damn good stories, go read some Kelley Armstrong. I can't recommend her enough.

Welcome!

I've been a bookworm since I was very small. I was that kid with my nose buried in a book at recess and lunch in elementary school. I was also the girl reading "Gone with the Wind" in between new "Babysitter's Club" books in the 5th grade. Basically, books have always been a big part of my life. So I set up this blog to talk about them. Feel free to join me, and I hope you enjoy.