✨ Manifest ✨
***Spoilers for The Fitz and the Fool Trilogy through chapter 13 of Assassin’s Fate. Mentions of the events of The Farseer Trilogy, The Liveship Traders Trilogy, The Tawny Man Trilogy, and The Rain Wilds Chronicles are fair game, too.***
Ask and ye shall receive. And receive, I have.
This is it, folks. The last time we will start a Realm of the Elderlings novel together. With Assassin’s Fate, our journey ends. (At least this particular iteration of it.)
I’m about one-third of the way through, and I’m already overwhelmed. If I was excited for Fitz to be chopping it up with Reyn and Malta in Kelsingra, you can probably imagine the excitement I had when Fitz first set foot on Tarman (!!!) and then, finally, stepped aboard Paragon.
I’m not sure how many times I’ve voiced my desire for Fitz to sail on Paragon, or as I prefer: ShipFitz, but what a moment to see it finally come to fruition.
And I mean, Paragon glaring at Fitz and informing him he’s the handsomer one? It’s like I won the lottery.
But that’s also what has astonished me the most as we begin this final ride: Robin Hobb’s beautiful patience as a storyteller. We’ve well covered her masterful character work and gorgeous prose. But I think her patience may be the unsung hero of her writing. That is, for readers willing to trust her and stay the course.
I noted previously that the series is called Realm of the Elderlings, yet we don’t really meet Elderlings in any meaningful way until the fourth subseries. As she explores different magics, cultures, histories, and corners of the map, she never rushes to force ideas together before their time.
Let’s examine:
First we leave Fitz entirely and move into Liveship Traders. Most of this trilogy feels almost completely separate from the events of Farseer. We get little drips and drabs, small connections and easter eggs hinting at the broader realm. It’s really not until fairly late in Ship of Destiny that the connective tissue becomes more overt. And depending on your level of observation, you realize some of it has been hidden in plain sight. (Fear not. I will be going deep into that particular connective tissue shortly).
Then we return to Fitz in Tawny Man. Again, I was excited to see the world expansion from Liveships collide with Fitz’s story. And in some ways it does. The events of Liveship Traders matter tremendously, but it still feels like one story influencing another rather than the two worlds truly colliding. Even with all the new characters and world aspects at her disposal, we never feel like Robin is rushing to smash all the toys together just because she can.
And that patience extends to Fitz’s own story. She takes her sweet time tying up loose ends started way back in Farseer. Consider Fitz and Molly. She dangles their reunion for many, many books before paying it off.
I don’t think many authors would have the confidence, or restraint, to wait that long. She – rightfully! – trusts in her characters and storytelling. And it makes for a richer, more grounded reading experience, with payoffs that feel all the more earned and satisfying.
Then comes Rain Wilds Chronicles. Interestingly, it manages to do both things at once. It’s a continuation of everything that came before, but also very much its own story. New characters. New problems. New corners of the world. We again find ourselves looking for connections and excited when old friends pop up and weave into the story.
Robin keeps expanding outward. Not vertically, with one block stacked directly atop another, but in every direction at once. Deepening existing ideas while continually broadening the scope of the world.
So here we are in Fitz and the Fool.
Does she suddenly abandon that approach because we’re entering the final trilogy? Absolutely not. Right back to her bread and butter: continue to build. Every piece meticulously placed until the larger mosaic begins to reveal itself.
And while at times it can feel sprawling, all of these pieces actually do fit together.
Fitz. The Fool. Amber. Reyn. Malta. Tintaglia. Kettricken. Chade. Rapskal. Alise. Leftrin. Tarman. Lant. Perseverance. Dutiful. Paragon. Althea. Brashen. And countless others. They are all part of this. A truly remarkable masterpiece.
This is so thrilling. And not just convergence for the sake of it, like the Jetsons meeting the Flintstones. Robin spent sixteen books building a world. So when all the threads finally start weaving together, every piece suddenly feels even more meaningful. And it’s the sweetest reward for going on this journey.
And I’ve not even finished it yet. (We haven’t even visited Wintrow and Queen Etta for crying out loud!)
Not that RotE has to be everyone’s cup of tea, but whenever I see someone contemplating if they should continue past Farseer, or especially those who ask whether they need to read Liveships and RWC, I feel a deep longing to convey why my answer is such an emphatic yes. These series aren’t homework or simply important lore so you’ll understand the plot later. But the sum of the parts becomes something greater than any individual piece. And the individual pieces are already pretty fucking phenomenal.
I’m starting to lose where I’m going with all of this, but bottom line: getting to this moment in Assassin’s Fate is so incredibly gratifying.
I have a feeling every post for Assassin’s Fate will have some degree of retrospection and celebration. And while it’s futile to speculate where I’ll be at the end, I have some suspicion of what (or who) may be occupying my attention. So for now, getting to celebrate the sheer craftsmanship of plot and storytelling, as all these worlds finally begin to collide, feels right.
Moving on:
Not only are worlds colliding, but so are identities. Specifically, the Fool and Amber.
As the various corners of the Realm finally begin to converge, so too do the many faces of our resident series-spanner. And watching Robin Hobb handle this has been one of the more fascinating aspects of Assassin’s Fate thus far.
I’ve often found myself getting a bit tangled when it comes to shifting identities. (See: ShunShine.) So it was oddly gratifying to watch Robin lean fully into the complexity of the Fool/Amber dynamic, sometimes switching from one to the other almost moment to moment:
“He smoothed his hair and flounced his skirts into order, and the Fool was gone. Amber trailed her fingers along the wall until she found the door and then left me sitting alone on the narrow bunk.”
It’s a trip to witness alongside Fitz. Because this isn’t merely a change of clothes and a bit of rouge on the cheeks. It’s a complete embodiment. Amber is every bit as real as the Fool.
And Robin doesn’t shy away from how complicated that can be. We see a parallel version of this through Perseverance’s attempts to understand Spark and Ash. And through that confusion, we get a lovely glimpse of how much Fitz has changed over the years.
“About Mage Gray. Sometimes you call him Fool, but he’s being Lady Amber now.”
“He is…”
“And Ash is Spark now.”
I nodded. “True, also.”
“And Spark is a girl.”
I nodded again.
… “Do you feel at all…odd about it? Uncomfortable?”
I laughed. “I’ve known him for many years, in many guises. He was King Shrewd’s jester when I was a boy. The Fool. Then Lord Golden. Mage Gray. And now Lady Amber. All different. Yet always my friend.” I reached for honesty. “But when I was your age, it would have bothered me a great deal. It doesn’t now because I know who he is. And who I am, and who we are to each other. That doesn’t change, no matter what name he wears or what garb he dons. Whether I am Holder Tom Badgerlock or Prince FitzChivalry Farseer, I know he’s my friend.”
It’s impossible not to think back to Golden Fool and Fitz’s reaction to learning about Amber. Or to imagine how much a younger Fitz would have struggled if confronted with both the Fool and Amber at that time. But Fitz has been through a lot. (Don’t we fucking know it.) And one of the gifts of that hard-earned wisdom is the ability to cut directly to what matters.
And It’s beautiful to see him pass that wisdom on to Perseverance.
Because let’s be honest: to these young men, who is manlier than Holder Badgerlock/Witted Bastard Prince Fitzchivalry Farseer himself? We are so entwined with Fitz’s inner vulnerabilities and insecurities that it’s easy to forget how others must see him from the outside. He’s a war hero. A prince. An assassin. A dragon-saver. A mythical wolf-man. The man has quite the résumé of badassery!
So there is something lovely about Fitz modeling a kind of quiet confidence for Per and Lant. He isn’t threatened by who the Fool is because he knows who the Fool is. And he isn’t threatened by it because he knows who he is.
[Note: I am not especially interested in diving deep into how this material intersects with modern discussions of gender identity. Not because it isn’t worthy of examination – it absolutely is – but because I don’t feel particularly equipped to do that conversation justice in this space. Still, it feels worth acknowledging. (And I’m sure there is some fantastic analysis and discussion out on this topic.)]
What’s especially fascinating is that I found myself going through a version of the same process.
I spent three entire books with Amber in Liveship Traders largely oblivious to the fact that she was also the Fool. (I started to catch on near the end, but still needed her to ride into Fool’s Errand on a horse named Malta to fully get it).
As a result, I ended up with two separate characters living in my head. I understand intellectually that Amber and the Fool are the same person. But emotionally, I’ve never quite managed to merge them.
That finally began to change when we arrived on Paragon. When Paragon gently scooped Amber into his hands – echoing one of their final moments together in Ship of Destiny (among the most beautiful scenes in all of RotE) – something clicked.
It’s such a powerful visual, and their relationship was so poignant, that I experienced this sudden flood of memory. It brought me back to Amber as we knew her many books ago. For the first time, it felt as though both Amber and the Fool were simultaneously present on the page.
So perhaps it’s just another byproduct of the much-discussed convergence happening throughout the final trilogy. But it’s truly remarkable to watch. Not only are the worlds finally coming together, so too are the faces of one of Robin Hobb’s most extraordinary characters.
Musings!
I hope you didn’t think that was all you were getting on the Fitz and Paragon interaction??
I opened with my excitement about Fitz boarding Paragon and coming face to face with his, well… face. But I kind of skimmed past it to get to the broader theme of patience and payoff, so I want to give some space to the actual encounter, which absolutely did not disappoint.
As Fitz has traveled to Kelsingra and then deeper into the Rain Wilds territory, we’ve had a few characters familiar with the Paragon masthead subtly react to meeting Fitz. And as we crept closer down the river, the excitement ratcheted up.
So when Paragon finally comes into view, and Fitz gets his first look at what Amber carved, I was practically vibrating.
‘I stared at the ship, my mouth hanging open. Spark and Perseverance looked from the ship to me. I was speechless, but Lant spoke the words aloud. ‘Sweet Eda. Fitz, he has your face. Right down to the break in your nose.'”
Sweet Eda indeed!
But the best moments are when we actually get to interact with Paragon. He is as emotional (unstable?) as ever. Extremely put out that Althea and Brashen’s son has gone to work on Vivacia, without an exchange of Etta’s son to his decks in return. Everyone’s about to leave this first encounter, when Paragon calls out:
“You, with my face. Don’t go.”
🤌
But it gets even better. Paragon tricks Fitz into getting within reach (classic “sorry, I didn’t hear you move”), then seizes him and pins him to the railing.
(I’m going to do my best not to get extremely weird about this, but I will desperately be needing some fanart of ShipFitz manhandling FitzFitz.)
ShipFitz ultimately just wants a little man-to-man chat with Fitz:
“Understand this. We share a face, though mine is more youthful and handsomer. I asked her to carve me a face she could love. She gave me yours. But it was ‘could’ love, not ‘did’ love. Remember that. She loves me far more than you. She always will.”
Oh, Paragon. You moody nut, you.
When I first joked about Fitz sailing on Paragon, I don’t think I could have imagined it coming to fruition so spectacularly. We didn’t just get a moment of “oh, the ship looks just like me, isn’t that something?” No, we get Fitz and ShipFitz having full-on beef.
Thank you, Robin.
Since I was so harsh on Reyn and Malta for losing control of the situation and the end of Fool’s Quest, I should probably give them a little credit. Because when we return to the chaos, they intervene right away:
“Rapskal, stop being an imbecile!” That was King Reyn adding his roar to the din.
I also noted that Rapskal was a bit out of his depth when it came to the larger dynamics at play, which I appreciated Amber reinforcing:
“There was Silver on my fingers before you were born, I believe, General Rapskal.”
To Rapskal’s credit, once Heeby lets him know that the mission to take down Clerres aligns quite nicely with dragon interests, he comes around quickly. He even goes so far as to gift Fitz with the vials of pure silver the Fool requested after previously firmly refusing. (Which Fitz then keeps to himself, because withholding potentially important information has historically worked out so well for everyone involved. Also, Chekhov’s silver??)
So we leave Kelsingra on much friendlier terms, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last time Fitz and Rapskal will cross paths. Rapskal makes it clear that he’s available to help the cause however he can, and we know he stays ready to ride his dragon into battle.
Which, unfortunately, makes me quite worried about him. We’ve already lost a fair bit of the Rapskal we first met. When I start looking around at potential casualties of war in the fight we know awaits us, he’s landing high on the list. (Good news for him, my death predictions are notoriously awful and this isn’t even the first time I predicted his demise in battle!)
Hey guys: Dwalia is a stone-cold BITCH. Like… damn!
They emerge from the pillar and her signature mask of niceness is gone. She is fucking ruthless. She’s abusive to Bee and her own party members, both physically and verbally.
I mean, take this line she hurls at Vindelier:
“Trust a sexless lout like you not to be able to tell the Unexpected Son from some White’s by-blow.”
Jesus.
So Bee’s situation has gone from bad to worse. We keep getting little flashes of hope that Bee might escape, but every time, she ends up back under Dwalia’s control. With Vindelier at her disposal, and Bee possessing virtually no resources of her own, there is simply no real way for her to escape.
One additional important Dwalia revelation: we learn of her connection to Ilistore (the pale woman has a name!). Apparently Dwalia and Ilistore were involved back in Clerres when the Fool and Ilistore were both students there. Dwalia blames the Fool for Ilistore’s demise, which explains the intensity of her hatred. I’m very much looking forward to her comeuppance.
I’ve touched on Bee’s situation a bit already, but her trials deserve a little more space.
We get a very interesting interlude in Chalced. After exiting the pillar into a cramped space of ruins (we’ve heard so much musing of what would happen if a pillar exit was blocked, it was satisfying – and horrifying – to see this play out), Bee is able to escape Dwalia and co. and lives on the run for a few days.
As hopeful as it was to see Bee escape her captors, Robin immediately confronts us with the reality of what that actually means for a child alone in a harsh, foreign land. She has nothing and no allies. She can’t even communicate to plead for help. She reaches the point where theft becomes her only way to eat, which lands her in jail and then right back into her captors’ hands.
This was fucking bleak.
I was desperate for Bee to get just one break. One thing to go her way. Of course it wasn’t going to happen. But it was nice to have a moment of delusion.
And so we end with Bee back on the path to Clerres, trapped aboard a ship of nightmares. You know shit’s bad when you are kind of just hoping the ship will sink 🥴.
Lord, please give me one moment of peace and healing between Fitz and Bee before this is all through.
I’d like to give a little space to Molly: gone, but certainly not forgotten.
I sometimes get the sense that Molly receives a bit of the short shift in the fandom. (At least from the limited bit I’ve encountered in my quest to avoid spoilers). But in keeping with her track record of never moving quickly past a loss, Robin does an excellent job ensuring Molly’s presence remains deeply felt long after her death. Not only through Fitz’s ongoing grief, but through the continued significance of her memory.
We have the candles that Fitz brought from home and Bee later finds in the Bear wreckage, creating this beautiful connection between all three of them. Scent is so powerfully tied to memory, and I love the way it repeatedly evokes Molly’s spirit for both Bee and Fitz.
And I especially love how Robin handles Fitz’s struggle with sharing Bee’s parentage with the Fool without allowing Molly to be erased in the process.
First we get the tense scene where the Fool has Spark dig through Fitz’s pack for Bee’s journals. It’s an incredibly charged moment, but ultimately Fitz relents and shares Bee’s dreams with him.
Then we get the scene where Amber recounts their story to Althea and Brashen:
“It hurt to hear Amber claim Bee that way, and I knew what Althea and Brashen must assume. The Fool might believe it was so, but to hear him speak of her that way to strangers wounded something in me. Molly, I thought fiercely. She had been Bee’s mother and no other. I did not wish these people to think I had fathered Bee upon Amber. No, Molly had been the one to endure that pregnancy, in some ways so alone, and Molly had been the one to cherish and protect a child that others would have let dwindle away. It wasn’t right for Amber to erase her.”
This is such a fascinating collision of several complicated ideas at once.
It’s difficult enough for Fitz to process sharing Bee’s parentage with the Fool. Bee is the child he raised with Molly, and then on his own. But hearing that claim come from Amber introduces another level entirely.
Because now strangers could easily assume that Amber was Bee’s mother. And doing so erases Molly from the equation altogether. And that is unacceptable (and frankly offensive) for Fitz and for me.
Whatever strange White Prophet soul-merging magic may have occurred, Molly carried Bee. She protected her and loved her fiercely.
Kudos to Fitz for never letting us forget that.
I’d also like to use this space to acknowledge one particularly lovely Molly-related moment. While Fitz is recovering from Skill-exhaustion, he overhears a conversation between Lant and Perseverance. When Lant mentions Buckkeep rumors of Fitz’s interest in men, Per bursts out in laughter:
“Him? Not him. There was only one for him. Lady Molly. It was always a joke among the servants at Withywoods.” He laughed again and then gasped, “ ‘Knock twice,’ the kitchen maids would giggle. ‘And then wait and knock again. Never go in until one of them invites you. You never know where they will be going at each other.’ The men of the estate were proud of him. ‘That old stud hasn’t lost his fire,’ they’d say. In his study. In the gardens. Out in the orchards.”
As Per continues to recount the Withywoods estate gossip surrounding Fitz and Molly’s very active marriage, Fitz drifts into fond memories of Molly while Per defends his reputation.
In an often heavy book, I found this moment very sweet.
And it’s nice to see someone push back against the rumors and misconceptions that often follow him.
It also reminds us that Withywoods was a real home. The people there knew Fitz. Not the prince. Not the assassin. Not the catalyst. Just a man hopelessly in love with his wife.
(Also, I now need a novella of Molly and Fitz getting it on all around the estate.)
Okay. Since there is really so much I could touch on, but I want to keep moving forward, I’m going to create another quick-hit section where I do none of the topics justice, but at least manage to acknowledge them:
- We learn in passing that Carson and Sedric are raising Jerd’s baby. Love that for them 🥹.
- A small detail I’ve really enjoyed is the clash of cultures between Buckkeep’s more traditional, hierarchical customs and the much more egalitarian Trader ways. Fitz is frequently taken aback by how casual the interactions are and the general lack of formality. It’s just another example of Robin creating such a vivid, lived-in world.
- Another small detail I loved was getting to witness Fitz encounter the treetop cities and dwellings of the Rain Wilds for the first time. It was such a mirror to my own experience, and just cool to watch this foreign, almost mythical region unveil itself to him.
- I can’t believe I am going to make this a bullet point, but there is so much Clerres lore and the Fool backstory given to us in this section (right down to a detailed discussion of the island schematics), and I truly don’t have the energy to untangle all of it. But we do at least learn about the four head honchos living in their four precarious towers, so it seems we’ve identified our big bads.
- Speaking of lore, there is A LOT of prophecy and dream information about what’s to come on Clerres. We have a new Fitz persona – “the Destroyer” (hot) – unveiled. Plus, it seems like Bee is going to burn it all down in one fashion or another. Again, I enjoy the prophecy elements, but I don’t get too deep into analyzing. I mostly absorb what I can in one pass and keep it moving.
- This is also criminal to reduce to a bullet point, but I’m quickly losing steam and need to touch on Fitz versus dragons.
We get an absolutely epic showdown between Fitz and Tintaglia, where he comes dangerously close to becoming a dragon snack. Fitz and Tarman also share an interesting connection. Through it, we learn the source of the mystery dragon essence the other dragons keep detecting. And it’s not the Fool carrying it. It’s Fitz’s connection to Verity-as-dragon.
We’ve been getting lots of Verity breadcrumbs lately. While I may have been inclined to view that last interaction between Fitz and Verity-as-dragon as closure, I’m not going to be shocked if he wakes his ass up to help out before this is all over.
I need to close out with where we leave Fitz and the Fool. Fitz is having a full-on panic attack about what awaits them, his own failures, and who he’s dragging into this mess with him. Fitz convinced he’s not good enough and the Fool basically saying, “Yeah, we may die. But what else is new?”
It’s classic Fitz and the Fool.
And in his effort to ground Fitz, he reaches for what will most bring him back to himself: Nighteyes. Specifically, how he chose to live to his very end:
“This is our last hunt, old wolf. And as we always have, we go to it together.”
Am I supposed to be ok?
Onward.
wizardwordship 