So in her ongoing efforts to utilize every possible permutation of a title with the words “Assassin” “Fool” “Fate” or “Quest”, Robin Hobb has gone back to the Six Duchies universe for yet another trilogy narrated by FitzChivalry Farseer, the third book of which is due out later this year.

In the first book, “Fool’s Assassin”, Fitz is continuing his happily-ever-after life from the end of book 6, “Fool’s Fate”, where he is married to Molly, and living with her on his father’s old estate, with his step-mother Patience and her younger kids, while still maintaining his relationships with the royals in Buckkeep, but without any of the intrigue and stuff he hated. The story meanders forward from there, with occasional incidents taking place with clear meaning for the reader, but which have little effect on Fitz, because of that thing where sometimes Hobb forces plot-mandated stupidity on him in order to spring surprises down the road.

The book initially takes place over a dozen years, almost entirely set in Fitz’s manor, with maybe a single visit to Buckkeep for an emergency healing crisis, and the first alternative PoV character from any of Fitz’s books shows up, in the person of yet another kid who ends up under his care. There is a lot of mysterious stuff about this kid, which Fitz totally misses, and about which he never speculates, but the meaning of which should be gob-smackingly obvious to any reader who paid attention to the prior trilogy. What’s also fairly obvious is the nature and source of mysterious people who pass through the area a couple of times, but again, completely elude Fitz, who is left to merely wonder what was going on, before going back to the sort of domestic management & child care issues for which everyone reads fantasy novels with the word “assassin” in the title.

The actual main adventure plotline starts about 25 years or so after the beginning of FF, making Fitz about sixty, but he is still capable of the action stuff, limited mainly by lack of practice, rather than age. It turns out that the mega-healing event which probably counts as the climatic point of “Golden Fool” has turned Fitz into a mild version of Wolverine, whereby he heals any injury more or less overnight, and still looks like he’s in his mid-30s. This is a source of concern to Fitz, as Molly who already had a couple of years on him to start, is aging normally. Fortunately for those readers who were never fans of that relationship (not to mention miffed that Burrich was so obviously killed off to facilitate Fitz getting his happily-ever-after with Molly), Molly has mellowed out a lot with years - or maybe Burrich’s legendary talents at taming beasts extended to his wife as well - and isn’t giving Fitz crap for doing things we actually want to read about, or being difficult for the sake of forcing the plot. She is quietly shuffled off to the side so as to not get in the way of the action when that starts, but luckily (for certain values of luck), Nettle has grown into all the worst aspects of her character demonstrated at the end of FF, being a shrill nag and buzzkill, who persistently sees the worst of Fitz, and presumes to pass judgement on her own father, except she is lacking absolutely any of the qualifications, superior experience or rightful authority that gave obstacle characters in prior books the right to do so. Especially regarding his child-rearing skills. Because a spinster in her thirties and her equally childless boyfriend totally know better than a man nearly twice their age who has successfully raised a kid himself, based on remote observations and short & rare visits to their home.

I honestly think that Megan Lindholm is the worst or greatest wife and mother in the universe, from the point of view of her spouse and kids. I like to think that she maybe approaches familial situations, wonders “What would Molly/Nettle do?” and then not do that. I can’t decide if she is sharply spotting what would be very frustrating from the other person’s PoV, or is actually imagining what a stupid & venal man would think about what she assumes is the reasonable position on the part of his (actually psychotic) love interest. This is not to say, of course, that Fitz is any sort of prize genius himself. His Nettle problem could easily be solved by a quick Skill message to Dutiful. “Dear guy whose life I saved and to whom I also served as a mentor, and who had me babysit his son. Your henchwoman thinks she’s gonna take my kid. What. The. Hell. Do what you gotta do to placate the person who knows more of the dirty family secrets than almost anyone.”

Anyway, speaking of annoying characters blessedly absent from book 1, we have the titular Fool. I liked the Fool, up until in “Assassin’s Quest,” when it was arbitrarily decided that he and Fitz were, and had been, best friends for life, and suddenly way too much time was taken up with exploring the degree of their more or less platonic relationship, in that and all subsequent books with Fitz.

Except I actually read the first two books. The Fool was just this mysterious figure who strung Fitz along and occasionally conspired with him, but shared absolutely no experiences in common with him, beyond geographic proximity. He didn’t go into the Mountain Kingdom, wasn’t a fellow Skill student or share in any of Fitz’s other education or labors. He wasn’t a confidante, with whom Fitz discussed his covert service or personal problems, and he was certainly never a comrade in arms. In fact, the implication in much of “Royal Assassin” was that they were sort of at cross-purposes, since the Fool’s priority was the overall Farseer rule in general, and King Shrewd in particular, while Fitz was a partisan of Verity’s interests, and a friend to Kettricken, with his loyalty to Shrewd basically an afterthought. They weren’t really in it together until Regal backed them all into the same corner. Then a whole book later, Fitz gets wounded and finds his way to the Fool’s door, and from there on out, they’re acting like they were super-tight, and Fitz puts up with a ton of the Fool’s bullshit as if he owes him the consideration of BFF who met in kindergarten.

Like, at one point, upon learning that Fitz had lied to him about having fathered a child, the Fool acts all hurt and outraged wondering how Fitz could have so occluded his hopes which were pinned on the continuation of the Farseer dynasty. Anyone who sees your kid in such abstract terms is EXACTLY the sort of person from whom you conceal said child’s existence. And again, it’s not like their relationship is such that the Fool is entitled to know every little detail about Fitz’s private life. Instead, the information flow between them is extremely one-sided, the Fool has never remotely given a hint as to why Fitz should be at all invested in his agenda, and keeps his motivations and interests generally opaque. Much later in “Golden Fool” when Fitz points out some of this, and makes some generally reasonable complaints about how the Fool handles their relationship, the Fool pitches a huge snit as if Fitz has mortally insulted him and unforgivably hurt his feelings, with a wildly inappropriate number of statements beginning with “you should know”, considering they are spoken the most secretive and furtive character in the series. And the books really seem to think Fitz is at fault in this.

The relationship between the two of them is more like a stalker and a target who has some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, whom said stalker has managed to successfully gaslight into believing they really are good friends. Change the Fool into a more typically masculine man, and Fitz into a woman, and ask if the sum total of his treatment of Fitz, merely in the first book and a half of the Tawny Man trilogy, is as charming or sweet as Hobb seems to think it is.

So the Fool is largely absent, except as an obvious instigator of a series of events, from "Fool’s Assassin," but there are a couple of inept junior assassins whom Chade inserts into the story, who have their own secret origins which are very obvious in hindsight, but unlike the other things Fitz fails to understand, are at least concealed from him and the audience by deliberate misinformation, again, to no real point. It really seems like Hobb is just jerking her readers around, but at least they don’t cause too many recriminations for Fitz’s failures to service the reality of their characters once they are exposed. And said mysterious backstories do not remotely justify how loathsome they are, but rather their characterization blows back against said histories, undermining the reveal about why we should care about each, by having given us so many reasons not to.

Anyway, Fitz’s new juvenile charge is lost to him and the ostensible plot of “Fool’s Quest” is his pursuit of the kid and the villains, who are the latest in Hobb’s string of nesting-doll antagonists. In “Tawny Man”, the Farseer Trilogy’s foes are revealed to have a more serious enemy behind them, and now the antagonist is the foe behind the bad guy from the “Tawny Man”, and pretty much everything going on in this one is really the Fool’s fault, for which absolutely no one remonstrates with him, unless you count his occasional descents into self-pity. These bad guys who were behind the bad guy who was behind the first set of bad guys, are responsible for the kidnapping, and while Fitz remains ignorant of it for a surprisingly long time in “Fool’s Quest”, it really should be his overriding consideration, that nonetheless keeps getting put off in favor of various types of drama going on and various people who were not even born in the original trilogy questioning Fitz’s decisions right and left, often in ways that make no real coherent sense, but which more seem calculated to make Fitz feel worst or most inconvenience him at any given time. As always, the leadership of the kingdom is effusive in their praise of Fitz and their avowals of support and generosity for everything he has both done and suffered in the prior books…except when it’s something really important to him, and suddenly they’re treating him like the world’s biggest douchebag.

One of the really annoying issues in this series is the implacable expectations of loyalty owed the Farseer dynasty by Fitz, especially regardless of his plans or wishes for his daughter. According to Six Duchies law, and Hobbs Morality, the bastard daughter of a bastard is irrevocably locked into the line of succession, but the actual legitimate princely patriarch of this branch of the family set everything in motion with his having sired a child before wedlock! Prince Chivalry knocks up a girl when they were both single and he was far from home, and that absolutely destroys any possibility of his fitness for the throne, the end. But Fitz knocks up a servant girl, and the resulting twice-illegitimate kid IS a Farseer heir and absolutely nothing Fitz can say or do on the matter can prevent the caretakers of the dynasty from dragging her into the whole mess. If Chivalry’s transgression rendered Fitz ineligible for the throne, why does not Fitz’s do the same to Nettle? Why doesn’t Fitz respond to any one of numerous assertions that his bloodline strips him of career or family choices with a “tell that to my father”? It really seems like the rules of these books work solely on the principle of what would be the most inconvenient outcome for FitzChivalry Farseer.

Though, to be fair, that’s kind of a microcosm of the issues with the Farseer kings, who put up with an awful lot of bullshit from their subjects, when you consider that they have what amounts to a monopoly on magic, and employ assassins, who are remarkably obedient, agreeable and unconcerned with the morality of their occupation or usage. That such an overall benevolent dynasty exists might be the most fantastical element of the series, especially considering the horrible moral attitude they generally have toward people, and the fundamental notion to the series is that certain people belong to the monarchy, due to the circumstances of their birth (i.e. with a gift for magic, or tenuous blood ties). Most of the scions of the family take that concept to its more benevolent imperative, choosing to take care of and nurture such people, but there is still the assumption that they have the right to do so, and that they are somehow praiseworthy for usurping control of such peoples’ lives, rather than snuffing them out lest enemies use them against the Farseers. According to Farseer logic and morality, there is a binary set solution to every noteworthy person’s existence, and we’re supposed to admire them for choosing the less homicidal one.

The problem is, we see the Farseer Family and the Six Duchies monarchy entirely through the perspective of a whiny, self-absorbed, melodramatic outcast, who has been completely brainwashed by them and raised by one of their servants, who sees everything through the past of his own moral shortcomings, and treats everyone under his authority as if they were guilty of the same, which is lots of ways turns into self-fulfilling prophecies. As a result Fitz spends eight books now operating as if he owes these people something, with shades of his foster father’s mentality of needing to atone for some vast sin.

I don’t think Robert Jordan and George Martin inflated their stories to make money, and I hate when people presume to judge motivations for such mistakes. I honestly believe both of them became too involved and attached to what they were creating and let it run away from them. Robin Hobb seems to be making a similar mistake, not in bloating out a series with superfluous world-building and character invention, but being unable to resist going back to a series and a character she has twice given a satisfactory resolution. Maybe it is to get another paycheck, but I like to believe it is out of interest and affection in what she has already wrought. Unfortunately where Jordan and Martin alienated readers by diluting what the readers liked under a whole lot of new content, Hobb is trying to stretch a character and the same conflict and relationships three times as far as they were meant to go.

The Farseer Trilogy was about a minor player who nonetheless played a critical part a number of times in a series of epic events. In a more conventional narrative, it would have been about the heroics of the noble wizard king who goes on a self-sacrificial quest to save his country, a loving and honorable queen who comes from a foreign land, but adopts her husband’s realm as her own and devotes her life to protecting it, and a prince’s widow who leads the resistance against foreign ravagers when the leadership of the kingdom fails. Verity, Kettricken, Patience, Chade and others were the heroes of the Red Ship War, while Fitz was just a background figure in their stories, who nonetheless played an indispensable role. The character arc was a guy who was used and broken by his service to an implacably demanding royal house, which abused him, kept him on their hook, tantalized him just enough to earn his love in a whipped-dog way, and took from him everything he ever hoped for or loved.

The Tawny Man undid all that with a story in which Fitz was called out of retirement and made into an unsung hero, and much of the hardships or losses from the prior series removed or cleared away. He took a more active and direct role in the resolution of the crises, but remained in the shadows, with the gratitude of the important people, and the simple rewards which are modest enough to make one overlook the obvious manipulations of the author to give them to him. But since she’s giving a man in his late thirties everything he dreamed of and thought lost to him in his early 20s, I can’t help but think she’s moving the character backwards.

Until the conclusion comes out later this year, it’s too early to see what is going on with this book (and honestly, the ends of her trilogies are not generally predictable from the prior two books – the weird stuff in Assassin’s Quest had absolutely no precedent in Apprentice or Royal Assassin; nor did Fool’s Quest or Golden Fool foreshadow elements of Fool’s Fate, such as Fitz’s mega-happy ending, or the number of characters who jumped into the story to be important in the third act), but with too much prior material to ignore the recurrent ploys and elements, it’s going to be interesting watching it play out.