Something was lost. In this attempt to soften the grounds between the best of the early Fitz saga and the worst at which it left the scene, something was truly lost. The style is the same, the characters we love are all present, save one who is treated with the least respect imaginable considering its importance all throughout Fitz’s saga (you’ll see)…Yet, my interest could never be captured. At some point, a 100 pages down, I had to admit to myself that I was reading only to see when it would get better. Imagine reading a book in which most of the characters piss you off or bore you to death and the hero, the one you truly love_ the one for whom you went ahead, paid 35 euros saying ‘ok, one more time. You never know…’ _is lost in their web of everyday boredom and yes, I’ll say it, misery. Save for two or three, the 250 first pages of this book are not worth our time.
the fantasy :
Hobb does it on purpose, I suppose; she shows us Fitz’s life as he convinced himself he had always wanted it, yet does that mean we want it? That we have to suffer through it, page after page?
He doesn’t live anything, his life is peaceful, ok we get it! But that could have been said in 100 pages much more worth our notice and the book been less repetitive, a little less long (and at the same time saved some of our money). Fitz has the nasty tendency to confuse between peaceful and boring to the point where his 'peace' eats him up, but that too we got a long time ago! I understand that scenario-wise she had to make the beginning really long to justify certain ‘events’ in order to then allow the events we’re really looking for to occur; and she wanted to do right by a few characters, I believe, but she ended up being diverted from the task I understood those books would be about. I mean, it’s a fantasy book, and I, for one, am still looking for the fantasy…But I know now I own a perfect guide if I ever want to know more on the country life of the gentry in fantasy...
All the scenario tricks that could be pulled together take more than a Hobbest long time to be laid out and as of now, none got pulled, yet ! Simply put, nothing happens, nothing of what does occur evolves, nothing changes for 250 goddamn pages…surrendered by the very people we thought we would flee in picking up this new part of the saga, seductively called ‘Fitz and the Fool’.
the characters:
Well, where is he? If it’s going to be only a trilogy (as wikipedia says), then I expect we won’t see enough of the Fool, for already more than a third of the first book has been wasted. I don’t care for Molly (ironically, this was the last chance to redeem her a little bit in our mind and instead she’s portrayed as even more ludicrous), for Burrich’s children (better had she left Burrich alive and never got his children to be born, for why kill a character that works and replace him by six or so that don’t?), not much for Bee as she is now (are we supposed to be touched by her relationship with Fitz ? Because for that effect, we would have had to be introduced to that character much before to be able to care for her, and not meet her out of the blue as a mere tool to move the plot forward. It's Fitz we care about, not Bee!), and not much for Nettle as she’s presented here: without depth, devoid of anything that could tempt our interest. Dutiful, Kettricken, Elliania, Chade, and so on, multiply their apparitions but only to deliver two or three bland sentences and to satisfy the reader with the minimum requirement for their presence.
the writing:
Too much is based on atmosphere and emotions, two things Hobb could always master successfully, two things she and we always counted on when picking up one of her books, yet here she seems to have lost that talent. For the few pages where she manages to trigger an emotion in us or a feeling of home in her beautiful sentences, most of the others are wasted on long descriptions of melancholic nature in a place (Withywoods) where the place itself and its characters are utterly devoid of it. Try as you might, how can a writer extract a powerful sensibility from characters (Molly and her children) that she took so long to portray as dry as a bone? The skills she generally excels in cannot be put to good use so long as Fitz remains refrained from any experience that could trigger his feelings in the first place.
Having said that, I want it to be better, I so want it, and expect it will be, since the other side of the duet has not yet entered the scene. So this negative critique only concerns the first part of the book, let's hope I turn my critique completely upside down by the time I close the back cover.
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